Credibility - THE Issue In Online Research

by Robert Bacal

These days everyone uses the Internet for "research" either informally, as in looking for a restaurant to try, or more formally, as in collecting information for inclusion in an academic paper. For ALL of us, there is a central, compelling, and urgent issue - who to believe.

Background

As the Internet (and the Web) have become popularized, not just for reading, but also for participating and expressing one's own opinions, the issue of credibility has become more and more critical for everyone. Why has it become even more of a concern now compared to, let's say, ten years ago? Here are some points:

• The barriers to entry for self-expression are virtually zero. A blog can be set up by anyone with a computer, free of charge, making it possible for everyone to express an opinion.
• Since there are no barriers to entry into having a public platform, and there are no "editors" per se, the majority of websites in existence today have NO editorial oversight and no fact checking. Even for people who sincerely want to be accurate, it's difficult to get everything right all the time. There's no checks or balances, unlike the traditional paper based publishing industries, where editors, fact checkers, even lawyers, are involved PRIOR to publication.
• Anyone can pass him or herself off as having any qualifications, education, or experience. This results in outright lying, in a worst case, to more commonly occurring exaggerations such as you might find on resumes. They aren't quite outright lies but they portray the individual positively, so credibility is enhanced.
• The proliferation of blogs, which were originally intended as personal modes of expression, much like "diaries" or "journals" have evolved into much more, but authors have NOT become more diligent or responsible in checking the information and facts they include. That is, blogs are less about "here's my day" or having a good old rant, than they are about presenting information. However, personal responsibility has not evolved.
• With the advent of social media, and "viral communication" bad information, factually incorrect material, and plain nonsense are picked up and repeated over and over until they quickly become unacknowledged "urban myths". Only people don't realize it. After all, when you see a piece of information re-posted, re-tweeted, etc 100's of times, there's a natural tendency to believe the content has merit. In fact, hundreds of people reposting from the same source, are often wrong because the original source is wrong, on the Internet, and inaccurate information can spread in minutes or hours.
• Take a look at these paragraphs. Are they mostly facts, mostly opinion, or mostly interpretation? Should you believe what's been written? Think about how you could verify the content? And, if you were writing an advanced paper on web credibility, would you use this, and provide a citation?
  The propensity for people to repeat misinformation on the net is highly influences by a set of logical errors people tend to make when reading and interpreting any material. These error seem to be more prevalent online, where people don't "read" in the same way people read printed matter. We know from eye scan studies, that most people scan webpages, and unfortunately, they often misunderstand what they have scanned, almost completely. Most people have probably seen cases where people, having read an article with evidence that supports a particular position, end up reposting their summaries as if the article's evidence refutes the position.
  
  Further to the issue of logical errors, basic mistakes when reading and then reposting involve confusing opinion and fact (as presented in web reading material), and confusing interpretation and fact. The latter is so prevalent, even on the part of very educated professionals, that it may be the norm. Readers get "stupider" on the Internet!
• Finally, blogs and the other forms of social media almost always consist of SHORT text. Posts on blogs (note that they are called posts, not articles to reflect that they have more in common with brief email communication) tend to run about 250- 300 words. It's exceedingly rare for posts and even web articles nowadays to run beyond five hundred words.
  
  In itself that is not a major problem, except that given limited writing skills on the part of many bloggers, lack of editing, and readers' tendencies to skim even short posts rather than read, the chances of MISUNDERSTANDING the writer's intent is huge. Then, the readers, having misread or not really read the post, virally tell others about its meaning it is worse than the old game of broken telephone. The message gets garbled and twisted, and repeated. Also, many subjects simply cannot be written out coherently in limited space. At least, not so misunderstandings are minimized.
• Finally, there is the issue of reputation. It's easy to make the mistake of assuming someone who is often talked about (retweeted, for example), or has many visitors to his or her blog, actually knows what he or she is talking about. In fact, those with the most "influence" due to their "popularity" are not necessarily achieving this through being erudite, knowledgable, or smart. The "influence" and popularity you see, particularly with respect to social media participation, comes from committing a lot of time to social media. It has very little to do with insight, or ability or accuracy.
  
  It's pretty simple. If you work the crowd, participate all over the place, you WILL gain a following simply on the basis of doing that.
  
  The flip side is that many people who would otherwise be able to refute much of the nonsense a) have better things to do than spend hours every day on Linkedin or Twitter, and b) don't have the fans that the marketers and others who spend huge parts of their day linking and tweeting, and whatever all they do. Hence, a lot of the nonsense goes unchallenged, because frankly, people equate popular with accurate.

So?

What does all this amount to? Well, it means that researching on the Internet requires a much more sophisticated set of skills and understanding then in the old days, when research happened in libraries, and kids did their homework with the home encyclopedia.

In our future articles we'll look at some of the skills and knowledge, and hopefully, help you develop better abilities to assess credibility in addition to using search and research tools productively.

Robert Bacal