Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent the context in which people interact with online information affects people’s credibility perceptions. In this study, credibility assessment is defined as perceptions of credibility relying on individuals’ expertise and knowledge. Context has been characterized with respect to three aspects: Context as user goals and intentions, context as topicality of information, and context as information activities. The data were collected from two empirical studies. Study 1 was a diary study in which 333 residents in Michigan, U.S.A. submitted 2,471 diary entries to report their trust perceptions associated with ten different user goals and nine different intentions. Study 2 was a lab-based study in which 64 subjects participated in performing four search tasks in two different information activity conditions – information search or content creation. There are three major findings of this study: (1) Score-based trust perceptions provided limited views of people’s credibility perceptions because respondents tended to score trust ratings consistently high across various user goals and intentions; (2) The topicality of information mattered more when study subjects assessed the credibility of user generated content (UGC) than with traditional media content (TMC); (3) Subjects of this study exerted more effort into making credibility judgments when they engaged in searching activities than in content creation. These findings indicate that credibility assessment can or should be seen as a process-oriented notion incorporating various information use contexts beyond simple rating-based evaluation. The theoretical contributions for information scientists and practical implications for web designers are also discussed.
Highlights
How to provide relevant information that fits into users’ information needs has long been a core research question among information scientists and information professionals over several decades
This paper addresses three research questions: Research Question 1: To what extent do people’s goals and intentions when conducting online information activities influence their perception of trust? Research Question 2: To what extent does the topic of information affect people’s credibility perceptions of traditional media content (TMC) and user-generated content (UGC)? Research Question 3: To what extent does the amount of effort that people invest in credibility assessment differ depending on the type of online activity?
Intentions, and topicality have been often considered as information seeking and use contexts in previous studies, we believe that including different types of information activities – searching and content creation – is an important contribution to the field of information science
Summary
How to provide relevant information that fits into users’ information needs has long been a core research question among information scientists and information professionals over several decades. Since the late 1990s when online information became prolific on the Internet, researchers and practitioners in information science have become interested in better understanding of people’s assessment of information credibility, quality, and cognitive authority (e.g., Rieh, 2002), which were initially identified as primary user-centered relevance criteria in a variety of studies (e.g., Wang & Soergel, 1998). Each credibility study begins with different sets of assumptions and conceptualizations of credibility Sometimes related concepts such as quality, authority, and reliability of information are used interchangeably without providing clear distinctions. Communication researchers (e.g., Johnson & Kaye, 1998) often use media-based frameworks to investigate the relative credibility perceptions of various media channels (i.e., online news, blogs, wikis, magazines, TV, etc.). Despite the field-specific foundations of credibility research, there has been renewed attention to investigating the credibility of online information in various research communities as people increasingly select what information to use based on their judgments of information credibility
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