Internet Credibility and the User: Building on the April Symposium

1. Internet Credibility and the User:Building on the April Symposium Looking Back and Looking Forward

2. Conclusions: Directions for Future Work • Conceptualizations • Research Agenda • Tools Development and Testing Eisenberg/Unsworth

3. Conceptualizations: Problem Definition • Define credibility according to: • Level • Need • Interest • Environment • Determine: • Scope of the problem • Assumptions • Terminology • The role of libraries and other institutions • Provide policy guidelines Eisenberg/Unsworth

4. Conceptualizations: Publications • White paper • Define credibility • Problem definition • Discussion of tools • Examination of 1st Amendment issues • Handbook • Policy Guidelines • K-20 • Libraries • Web publishers and content providers • ?? • Research publication • State of the field? • After next round of research efforts? Eisenberg/Unsworth

5. Research Agenda • Assessment of existing practice • User studies Eisenberg/Unsworth

6. Research Agenda: Assessment of Existing Practice • Literacy standards • Existing literature and research • Potential harm and benefits of credibility • Methodologies – how to learn or teach skills Eisenberg/Unsworth

7. Research Agenda: User Studies • Motivation, users, and credibility. Do users perceive credibility as a problem? • So what? Is credibility a problem? (implications of credibility for the user) • What do users want to support credibility? • User networks—relationship to and effectiveness in determining credibility. • Young users; credibility at different developmental levels. Eisenberg/Unsworth

8. Research Agenda: User Studies • Strategies and techniques. How do users determine credibility? • What criteria do users apply (internal model verification)? • What triggers awareness? How do we promote a healthy skepticism? • How effective and efficient are people at determining credibility in different situations? Eisenberg/Unsworth

9. Tools Development & Testing • Systems tools • User tools Eisenberg/Unsworth

10. Tools Development & Testing:General Guidelines Should…. • Bridge research and practice • Unobtrusively support learning and evaluation • Support existing practice • Build on existing systems (e.g., Google, libraries) • Design for the margins • Be controlled by the user • Be transparent; open source • Be easier to use than not to use. Eisenberg/Unsworth

11. Tools Development & Testing:System Tools - Ideas • Prescreened lists of sites (e.g., “Loogle” – Subset of library selected websites) • Annotations: peer, expert, user • Audit trail (e.g., Wikis include an audit trail of annotations) • Build checklist or rating into the browser or search engine • Reputation systems • Bind the source to information – identity and relationships Eisenberg/Unsworth

12. Tools Development & Testing:User Tools - Ideas • Guides and handbooks • Teaching guide • Video tapes • Teaching modules • Quick tips • Checklist • Card or bookmark • Policy implementation • Guidelines and tools for content providers and systems developers Eisenberg/Unsworth

13. Additional directions • Alliance building (e.g., Ken Kay, 21st C Partnerships) • PR campaign - raising awareness • Education programs Eisenberg/Unsworth

14. Further Discussion? Eisenberg/Unsworth

15. How we got there:Selected points by attendees Eisenberg/Unsworth

16. Miriam Metzger: Conceptual Overview • Five common criteria • Accuracy • Authority • Currency • Coverage • Objectivity • Problem is that people don’t use them! Eisenberg/Unsworth

17. Miriam Metzger: Conceptual Overview • Credibility (Hovland et al) • Is in the eyes of the audience/receiver of the information • Believability is made up of 2 primary dimensions • Trustworthiness • Expertise • There are fewer gatekeepers who regulate information Eisenberg/Unsworth

18. Miriam Metzger: Conceptual Overview • There is no universal determination of what is credible. How do we describe something with so much variability? • Measure credibility • Medium • Forms of communication • Entire site design • Information messages on the site • Sponsor/operator • Author of the site • gatekeepers who regulate information Eisenberg/Unsworth

19. Miriam Metzger: Conceptual Overview • Types of online credibility; can be measured at different levels • Surface • Presumed credibility • Reputed credibility • Earned credibility • Elements of web credibility • Site features • Information on the site • Author features • Users Eisenberg/Unsworth

20. Miriam Metzger: Institutions • Schools • libraries • commercial organizations • massmedia • news (pr releases • Search engines • government • online communities • healthcare systems, organizations • museums • websites for parents • families • social service institutions. Eisenberg/Unsworth

21. Mary Ann Fitzgerald • Motivation and goals of the user • Critical thinking skills: teach criteria about what’s authoritative • Users have the power to choose their own criteria and strategies. • Direct connection of critical thinking and library skills to Internet credibility skills Eisenberg/Unsworth

22. Elspeth Revere • Public school cultures do not encourage debate and confrontation. • Re Google – committed to figuring out what users want and giving it to them! Eisenberg/Unsworth

23. Delia Neuman • “For years, people have judged books by their covers and civilization has not collapsed.” • We need to ask: to whom, for what purpose, in what context and in what degree, what beliefs, perceptions, and characteristics of users. • Must be user-focused. Eisenberg/Unsworth

24. Carolyn Brodie and Greg Byerly • Self-service, Self-sufficiency, satisfaction, seamless. • User expectation – to get everything with one search. • Important to look at Google – why is it so successful and important? Implications for credibility. Eisenberg/Unsworth

25. Susan Curzon 7 teaching challenges • Developing the educational strategy: aligning information literacy with critical thinking. • Tie to standards and tests. ICT. Taking information literacy to different disciplines. • Teaching the teachers – teacher education programs. • Accreditation support – info lit as part of. • Info literacy is more than computer literacy • Determine cost-benefit analysis. • Increase librarian and classroom teacher collaboration. Eisenberg/Unsworth

26. Kristen Eschenfelder • Institutions • Implications for all types of institutions– regulative, normative, cultural-cognitive • Look at context. • Focus mostly on the individual. What about the role of the group? • Relationships over time? A process model? • How is the Internet different? • The value of balancing exposing things and not exposing things. • Open source facilitates transparency. Eisenberg/Unsworth

27. Nancy Willow • Focus on assessment tools • Lack of communication across groups – systems engineers, librarians, curriculum people • National Education Technology Plan – aimed at companies. One way to influence commercially produced products. • MAJOR concern about filtering. Eisenberg/Unsworth

28. Batya Friedman • Digital information is different. • And, its not just about the Internet – ubiquitous computing. • Information is valuable; malleable; tailorable; interacts with the user. Eisenberg/Unsworth

29. Batya Friedman • Value sensitive design – puts values into technology. • 3 part methodology – • Conceptual investigations (what do we mean by credibility?) • Empirical investigations (about social law and regulations) • Systems (what do we do technologically?) Eisenberg/Unsworth

30. Batya Friedman • Design for the margins • Whose credibility cue is it? • Can we validate multiple credibilities? • Think about plurality. • Think about design for flexibility. Eisenberg/Unsworth

31. Jonathan Lazar • 3 categories of info • 1:1, 1:many, many:many • Credibility tools on email – flag suspicious links, filters (whitelist), linguistic parsers • Name recognition • Seals • Privacy policies Eisenberg/Unsworth

32. Jonathan Lazar • Tools aren’t the only answer – but can help a lot of people – and need to go for that group (even if only 40%) • Pop-up based on user feedback. Gives a credibility rating. • Prescreened list of sites (e.g., librarian’s index) • Reputation or recommender systems. • Collaborative filtering. • Online communities that monitor credibility of the members. • Cards, e.g., Web Accessibility Foundation Eisenberg/Unsworth

33. Dave Lankes • What’s the problem? Is there even a credibility problem? • Did we move from a time when all information was credibility to all info is suspect? • It’s not the wild wild west anymore. • Differences from past media: • Increased ability for self service • Making you part of the system • Nature of peer tools – w/o central authority • New obligation or Faustian burden • Self service leads to greater obligation for literacy of all types • In a self service/self selection world, all authority becomes advisory. All credibility situational. Eisenberg/Unsworth

34. Dave Lankes • Many to many doesn’t make sense in the user context. • Tools • Awareness • Encryption • Identity management • Medical information • Annotations • Audit trail • Bias • Is situational; take the concept of bias out of the conversation. • Bias is one of the reasons people talk about credibility but information IS biased and needs to be. Eisenberg/Unsworth

35. Stuart Sutton • Identity and relationships • Can build a “web of trust” coming out of what we do know • Emerging semantic relationships. • Annotation layered on community assessment, but the end user will walk the last mile. • Don’t need to get to the code level to be transparent. Standards is required. • Tools don’t have to be sophisticated. Eisenberg/Unsworth

36. Stuart Sutton • Identity and relationships • Can build a “web of trust” coming out of what we do know • Emerging semantic relationships. • Annotation layered on community assessment, but the end user will walk the last mile. • Internet2 – added people, places, and things semantically. Can use this if we can determine credibility semantically. • Inverse relationship bet. credibility and privacy. [?] Eisenberg/Unsworth

37. Mike Eisenberg • Harvest all the websites that libraries collect and create a search. • We trust libraries. • We need education to raise awareness, tools, and policy. • Need an unobtrusive tool that runs in the background and doesn’t stop you and is built on identity and relationships Eisenberg/Unsworth

38. Eliza Dresang • The International Children’s Digital Library is a showcase of user’s research. Eisenberg/Unsworth

39. Louis Fox • Is this really a big problem? • Is there research on informal information networks. • Through interaction, knowledge is being created. • Danger of filtering. 40/70 schools have filtering that filters everything with .edu! Eisenberg/Unsworth

40. Debra Tatar • Concerned about forced into a worldview of just accurate or inaccurate information. Need more models. Eisenberg/Unsworth

41. Jackie Burkell • The key to teaching learned skepticism is to think about it at different levels. • How do we get to the specific issues. • We need to ask different questions for different electronic sources. • Problem with seals – not credibility, just that sites have a policy. Eisenberg/Unsworth