MAIN > SPOTLIGHT ARCHIVE > Kristina_Woolsey (Nov 21)

Tuesday 21st November 2006 9:05 am

Woolsey:  Credibility is a Human Issue

Humans continue to be the major source for credibility judgements, even as tools are better and better.  Both the young and the old contribute to the problem.

In the very simplest sense, if one is reading about a topic online (in the news or a more archival context) one can quite easily find alternative sources for the same information immediately and easily.  (One doesn’t have to find a copy of the LA Times or Forbes to check the views presented in the NY Times, or find an encyclopedia to check the accuracy of a historical proposition, or call a friend to see if a news story in their town was accurate. Instead, the “net is one’s friend”.  Immediately, with very little effort, inside the psychological moment of the initial presentation, one can find alternative views and data on a topic. Who knows, popular information sources may even start including references that can deliberately support various positions ...)

And so the basic context of online engagement is fundamentally that of credibility checking. Add to this some experience with different databases, meta-tagging and metrics of credibility, and existing tools will become refined to assess accuracy/ references at a scale quite unknown today.

The weaknesses of these tools?  Human judgment. Deciding what to believe, how to connect it to prior assumptions, and what to do with new knowledge is a human task. Systems can provide better and better data, but then humans are typically required (for important tasks).

Many individuals who are accessing information on the web have no experience in traditional skills of judgment and information aggregation (e.g., they are young). Most individuals are very unsophisticated in using online sources and don’t like to spend their entire lives online (e.g., they are old).  In theory, these two groups of individuals will intersect, and new models of best practice will develop from the experiences that come from these two different perspectives.

Category: Credibility

Tags: , , ,

Like this post?

Comments

Submit Thoughts

We would love to have you add in the discussion. Please submit your content to our editorial review board:

Name (public):

Email (required but private, only used if our editors need to contact you):

Upload your photo (recommended: this helps bridge online/offline worlds)

Affiliation (public):

URL of your website or institution (public):

Comments:
(We will automatically remove html codes.)

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image:

(Warning: You will NOT be warned if our spam filters delete your comment. Cutting and pasting tends to confuse our spam filters, so always keep a copy. If your comment passes the spam test, you will be shown a brief "Thank You" message after hitting the Submit button, otherwise you will be returned to this page with your comment gone and no warning. Only comments that pass the spam test will be emailed to our editors for approval and posting. Contact our editors using the link in the footer if you have a problem.)

Produced by Games for Change. | TOP