Credibility Online

Week 6 – 2 May 2006

Tonight’s Overview

Change story: success! Question: Compare technology used to

submit Bios Week 4 and Change Story Week 5.

Guest Lecture: Barbara Warnick Credibility in the blogosphere Change – assessment, feedback Explore Seattle (lab)

Measuring Influence, Credibility

Why? How?

Blogosphere Influence – Why?

Information overload Growth as a form of public sphere Shapes the news hole Helps consumers make decisions Anything else?

I’d add …

How do we insure that we aren’t creating a shallow citizenry: A shallow citizenry can be turned into a

dangerous mob more easily than an informed one. – Dan Gillmor, We The Media

Info Overload The inability to extract needed

knowledge from a large quantity of information

Exponential growth of the blogosphere -> Technorati tracking:

2 million blogs, March 2004 7.7 million blogs, March 2005 37.5 million blogs and 2.3 billion links, April

2006

A form of public sphere? Jürgen Habermas theory, adapted from

Extending the Public Sphere Through Cyberspace: The Case of Minnesota E-Democracy, First Monday Autonomy from state and economic power Participants exchange and critique moral-

practical claims Sincerity; discursive inclusion and equality Honest, active listening – respectful

communication Self-examination/reflection

Shaping the News Hole Trent Lott story (2002)

Covered by only one reporter following event

Kept alive by bloggers - liberal and conservative

Microsoft “switch” campaign (2002) LA Times (2004)

Supreme Justices Scalia v Ginsburg Colbert’s monologue Saturday night?

Assists decision-making (1/2)

From Measuring Online Trust of Websites:Credibility,Perceived Ease of Use and Risk Online trust is a function of

Credibility, honesty, expertise, reputation Ease of use Risk

Where honesty and expertise “loaded together”

Assists decision-making (2/2)

From Credibility Assessments of Online Health Information: The Effect of Source Expertise and Knowledge of Content Unregulated environment increases risk Females more trusting than males Knowledge increases skepticism Source does matter (in this study) Some apparent “if I read it, it must have a

modicum of truth”

Why do we judge credibility? Is the expert the only credible source? I

would argue that our trust in credentials gives the source the ability to decide what information is important rather than making the reader accountable for assessing the information. – student, 2005

If we are ever going to impact corporate media control, we need to change the idea that those sources are the only credible sources for information. How can we change the notion of credibility to include resources such as blogs? – student, 2005

Tools to Assess Credibility

Why should we care what the numbers say? Readers need and want credible sources Do we want to return to the days of

pamphleteers and soapboxes, snake oil salesmen and patent medicine (figuratively speaking)?

Counting for Influence

Academics count citations Counting treats all as equals Countered by weighting Comparisons are within field of study

Measuring Blogosphere Influence Tools like Technorati

Count inbound links Not all links created equal

Tools like Blogpulse Count word clusters, links Show trends (rhetoric and sites)

Truth Laid Bair Tools like Google, A9 (amazon rewards!) Human sites like Blogcritics, About.com,

Open Source Directory

When we “count” blogs … We get a little consensus (“A List”) The long tail, documented

A small set of bloggers account for the majority of traffic

“[W]e know that power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options. We also know that as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme.”

Power law distribution (see chart)

Exercise – part 1

Log into Bryght – take a few minutes to list the 10 blogs (preferably, but websites accepted) that you could not live without

Name - URL

Exercise – part 2

This one we’ll do on paper!

While I’m getting this ready … we can start our review of the Change story

First Individual Project Change – text and image

Create a new word document – in it, note your thoughts (suggestions for improvements, kudos) about each student’s story.

After you’ve reviewed everyone’s work – revisit your own story. What would you do differently, if anything? What has this exercise affirmed?

Send these to me as an e-mail attachment by end of day Wednesday, please. I will share comments (anonymously, of course).

Resume Power Law Exercise I’ve given a piece of paper to Andrea with

her 10 blogs. She will give this to the person on her left, who will look at the list and then generate his/her own new (public) list of 10. Pass to the left. Repeat/rinse.

We’ll do this until everyone has a new list of 10 sites.

Then I’ll compare the differences and report back next week.

Why is this important?

Because the sites you see are shaped, in part, by those who have already seen them.

Thus, the business logic built into the tools is shaping your choices and helping to mold “credibility” Thus, transparency is key!

Questions to Ponder Which link is the more representative of

influence: blogroll or post? Are several daily short posts more reflective

of influence than less frequent longer (more depth) posts?

How do we deconstruct the blogosphere to provide useful information about credibility within genres?

Other?

Explore Seattle

Next assignment – coffee shop or Ballard story – next week

10 days later, the last story Small groups work per course page

Resources Gill, KE (2004). How can we measure the

influence of the blogosphere. WWW2004, New York, NY USA. http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf

Gill, KE (2005). Blogging, RSS and the information landscape, a look at online news. WWW2006, Chiba Japan. http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/gill_www2005_rss.pdf