Online Information Environment Research Articles

Cut the CRAAP: Replacing vertical evaluation with lateral reading

AbstractThis chapter discusses the history of source evaluation methods within the ever‐changing field of information literacy, including a critical assessment of one popular approach, the CRAAP Test. The author then endorses an alternative approach, lateral reading, which encourages students to engage more deeply when evaluating digital resources in an online information environment. Strategies for incorporating lateral reading into higher‐education information literacy instruction are also included.

Cut the CRAAP: Replacing vertical evaluation with lateral reading

AbstractThis chapter discusses the history of source evaluation methods within the ever‐changing field of information literacy, including a critical assessment of one popular approach, the CRAAP Test. The author then endorses an alternative approach, lateral reading, which encourages students to engage more deeply when evaluating digital resources in an online information environment. Strategies for incorporating lateral reading into higher‐education information literacy instruction are also included.

Nudge-based misinformation interventions are effective in information environments with low misinformation prevalence

Nudge-based misinformation interventions are presented as cheap and effective ways to reduce the spread of misinformation online. However, despite online information environments typically containing relatively low volumes of misinformation, most studies testing the effectiveness of nudge interventions present equal proportions of true and false information. As the effectiveness of nudges can be highly context-dependent, it is imperative to validate the effectiveness of nudge-based interventions in environments with more realistic proportions of misinformation. The current study (N = 1387) assessed the effectiveness of a combined accuracy and social-norm nudge in simulated social-media environments with varying proportions of misinformation (50%, 20%, and 12.5%) relative to true and non-news-based (i.e., “social”) information. The nudge intervention was effective at improving sharing discernment in conditions with lower proportions of misinformation, providing ecologically valid support for the use of nudge-based interventions to counter misinformation propagation on social media.

News and misinformation consumption: A temporal comparison across European countries.

The Internet and social media have transformed the information landscape, democratizing content access and production. While making information easily accessible, these platforms can also act as channels for spreading misinformation, posing crucial societal challenges. To address this, understanding news consumption patterns and unraveling the complexities of the online information environment are essential. Previous studies highlight polarization and misinformation in online discussions, but many focus on specific topics or contexts, often overlooking comprehensive cross-country and cross-topic analyses. However, the dynamics of debates, misinformation prevalence, and the efficacy of countermeasures are intrinsically tied to socio-cultural contexts. This work aims to bridge this gap by exploring information consumption patterns across four European countries over three years. Analyzing the Twitter activity of news outlets in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, this study seeks to shed light on how topics of European significance resonate across these nations and the role played by misinformation sources. The results spotlight that while reliable sources predominantly shape the information landscape, unreliable content persists across all countries and topics. Though most users favor trustworthy sources, a small percentage predominantly consumes content from questionable sources, with even fewer maintaining a mixed information diet. The cross-country comparison unravels disparities in audience overlap among news sources, the prevalence of misinformation, and the proportion of users relying on questionable sources. Such distinctions surface not only across countries but also within various topics. These insights underscore the pressing need for tailored studies, crucial in designing targeted and effective countermeasures against misinformation and extreme polarization in the digital space.

The Way Forward for Online Public Opinion Governance in the Age of Big Data

With the rapid development of big data technology and the popularization of Internet applications, the role of Internet public opinion in social governance has become increasingly prominent. Internet public opinion not only reflects hot issues of social concern and public sentiment, but also affects social stability and national security. Therefore, strengthening the rule of law governance of online public opinion has become an urgent problem. The purpose of this study is to explore the rule of law basis and major problems of online public opinion governance in the era of big data, to analyses the shortcomings of the current implementation of the rule of law in online public opinion, and to propose corresponding countermeasures. In the context of the big data era, the rule of law in online public opinion governance faces challenges in many aspects. Inadequate supervision, imperfect rule of law system, deficiencies in the implementation mechanism, and weak public awareness of the rule of law together constitute the main problems in the current governance of online public opinion. To effectively deal with these problems, it is necessary to start with strengthening supervision, improving the rule of law system, reinforcing the implementation mechanism and raising awareness of the rule of law. Through these measures, a more mature and effective rule of law system for the governance of online public opinion can be constructed, thereby safeguarding the healthy development of the online information environment and maintaining social harmony and stability.

What Chinese Internet Users “Like” to Read: Selective Exposure in a Restricted Information Environment

Abstract We study the phenomenon of selective exposure in China's restricted online information environment. Through an experimental survey study, we measure to what extent features of online news, such as popularity (i.e. number of “likes”), influence information selection among Chinese internet users (“netizens”). We find evidence of preferences for news information according to news topic and the nationalist sentiments of individuals. Generally, for news about domestic affairs, Chinese netizens prefer articles that take the opposite position of the government; for foreign affairs, they prefer articles aligned with the government's position. However, nationalistic individuals are more likely to select domestic affairs articles congruent with the Chinese government's issue framing. We also find social endorsements to be highly influential on news selection behaviour. Popular posts with many “likes” attract Chinese netizens to the point where they select content they may not otherwise read, even though the internet environment is easily manipulated.

"Fact-checks are for the Top 0.1%": Examining Reach, Awareness, and Relevance of Fact-Checking in Rural India

Social media platforms have witnessed an unprecedented growth in users from rural communities in India. Many of these users are new to online information environments and are highly susceptible to misinformation. Fact-checking has the potential to reduce the proliferation and impact of misinformation; however, little is known about how fact-checking organizations in India serve rural users. To fill this gap, we conducted interviews with 12 prominent fact-checking organizations in India to understand their current practices and challenges in providing their services to rural users and the associated human and technological infrastructure they use. We discovered several measures that fact-checking organizations take to increase the reach, awareness, and relevance of fact-checked content for rural users, such as engaging with stringer networks and utilizing vernacular languages. However, fact-checking organizations also face severe challenges that limit both the scale of their work and engagement from rural users. Drawing on these findings, we provide design and policy recommendations to improve the reach, awareness, and relevance of fact-checked content for social media users in rural areas.

A feasibility study for a unified, multimodal analysis of online information foraging in health-related topics.

Digital health literacy (DHL) is the ability to find, understand, and appraise online health-related information, as well as apply it to health behavior. It has become a core competence for navigating online information and health service environments. DHL involves solving ill-structured problems, where the problem and its solution are not clearcut and may have no single answer, such as in the process of sensemaking. We employ and expand on information foraging theory to address how experts and novices in information retrieval perform a search task. Our overarching aim is to pinpoint best practices and pitfalls in understanding and appraising health-related information online to develop a digital intervention to increase DHL and critical thinking. In this feasibility study, we recruited a total of twenty participants for our expert and novice subsamples. We collected sociodemographic data with a self-developed survey, video data through an observation protocol of a 10-minute search task, as well as audio-video data via a retrospective think-aloud. The three, multimodal data streams were transcribed and aligned. Codes were developed inductively in several iterations, then applied deductively to the entire dataset. Tabularized, coded and segmented qualitative data were used to create various quantitative models, which demonstrate viability for the qualitative and statistical comparison of our two subsamples. Data were visualized with Epistemic Network Analysis to analyze code co-occurrences in the three aligned data streams, and with Qualitative/Unified Exploration of State Transitions to examine the order in which participants in our two subsamples encountered online content. This paper describes our methods and planned analyses elaborated with mock figures. Quantifying qualitative data, aligning data streams, and representing all information in a tabularized dataset allows us to group data according to various participant attributes and employ data visualization techniques to pinpoint patterns therein.

Opinion Formation in Online Public Debates Structured in Information Cascades: A System-Theoretic Viewpoint

Online information cascades (tree-like structures formed by posts, comments, likes, replies, etc.) constitute the spine of the public online information environment, reflecting its various trends, evolving with it and, importantly, affecting its development. While users participate in online discussions, they display their views and thus contribute to the growth of cascades. At the same time, users’ opinions are influenced by cascades’ elements. The current paper aims to advance our knowledge regarding these social processes by developing an agent-based model in which agents participate in a discussion around a post on the Internet. Agents display their opinions by writing comments on the post and liking them (i.e., leaving positive assessments). The result of these processes is dual: on the one hand, agents develop an information cascade; on the other hand, they update their views. Our purpose is to understand how agents’ activity, openness to influence, and cognitive constraints (that condition the amount of information individuals are able to proceed with) affect opinion dynamics in a three-party society. More precisely, we are interested in what opinion will dominate in the long run and how this is moderated by the aforementioned factors, the social contagion effect (when people’ perception of a message may depend not only on the message’s opinion, but also on how other individuals perceive this object, with more positive evaluations increasing the probability of adoption), and ranking algorithms that steer the order in which agents learn new messages. Among other things, we demonstrated that replies to disagreeable opinions are extremely effective for promoting your own position. In contrast, various forms of like activity have a tiny effect on this issue.

The effect of social media environments on online emotional disclosure: tie strength, network size and self-reference

PurposeMotivating users to self-disclose online is significant to the long-term development of social media. Therefore, research on emotional disclosure, a significant form of self-disclosure, is required. By developing a stimulus-organism-response model, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which the social media environment affects users' online emotional disclosure.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes two dimensions of social media environments, the online interpersonal environment (tie strength and network size) and the online information environment (self-reference). They are hypothesized to stimulate users' internal psychological needs (image management and emotional expression) which in turn will influence their emotional disclosure intentions. Using data from 489 users of WeChat Moments, the authors conduct partial least squares analysis to validate the research model.FindingsThe findings show that users' intrinsic psychological needs are stimulated by social media environments, but network size is not correlated with the need for emotional expression. The user's need for emotional expression promotes both positive and negative emotional disclosure intentions. The need for image management has a positive impact on positive emotion disclosure intentions but has a negative impact on negative emotion disclosure intentions.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the understanding of online emotional disclosure. It can also help social media managers create efficient plans to encourage users to create content.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2022-0245.

Extreme weather as a window: Exploring the seek and supply of climate change information during meteorological disasters in China

Public engagement is essential for China to address climate change; however, few studies have explored how to encourage climate awareness among Chinese residents. The objective of this study is to explore the role of local extreme weather in advancing Chinese people's climate change awareness. Whether local extreme weather functions as an opportunity to trigger the public's interest in climate change across China and whether the local online information environment resonances with extreme weather by providing climate change news feeds have been examined by a combination of city-level meteorological warnings and search engine data. The results have verified that residents from 50 of the 360 cities show increasing concern for climate change when an extreme weather event occurs locally; however, only the online information environment of two cities echoes local extreme weather by providing more information about climate change or global warming. Correlations between extreme weather events such as heavy rain, an extreme weather event that has occurred in China, and climate change are underestimated. The effect of extreme cold events and snowfall on climate change awareness should also be noted more in China. This study suggests there is still a lot of room for improvement regarding both increasing and satisfying the public's pre-existing climate change-related concerns. A promising approach would be adopting climate change prevention and adaptation as a news report framework for extreme weather events.

A feasibility study for a unified, multimodal analysis of online information foraging in health-related topics

Background: Digital health literacy (DHL) is the ability to find, understand, and appraise online health-related information, as well as apply it to health behavior. It has become a core competence for navigating online information and health service environments. DHL involves solving ill-structured problems, where the problem and its solution are not clearcut and may have no single answer, such as in the process of sensemaking. We employ and expand on information foraging theory to address how experts and novices in information retrieval perform a search task. Our overarching aim is to pinpoint best practices and pitfalls in understanding and appraising health-related information online to develop a digital intervention to increase DHL and critical thinking. Methods: In this feasibility study, we recruited a total of twenty participants for our expert and novice subsamples. We collected sociodemographic data with a self-developed survey, video data through an observation protocol of a 10-minute search task, as well as audio-video data via a retrospective think-aloud. The three, multimodal data streams were transcribed and aligned. Codes were developed inductively in several iterations, then applied deductively to the entire dataset. Tabularized, coded and segmented qualitative data were used to create various quantitative models, which demonstrate viability for the qualitative and statistical comparison of our two subsamples. Results: Data were visualized with Epistemic Network Analysis to analyze code co-occurrences in the three aligned data streams, and with Qualitative/Unified Exploration of State Transitions to examine the order in which participants in our two subsamples encountered online content. Conclusions: This paper describes our methods and planned analyses elaborated with mock figures. Quantifying qualitative data, aligning data streams, and representing all information in a tabularized dataset allows us to group data according to various participant attributes and employ data visualization techniques to pinpoint patterns therein.

Transnational Chinese students’ online information literacies during the COVID-19 pandemic

Using a transnational lens, this narrative study examines the online information literacies of six Chinese international graduate students in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data of the study were collected from phenomenological interviewing, weekly information-seeking dairies, and focus group discussions. This study illuminates Chinese international students’ transnational information literacies in navigating the pandemic online information environment. These students stayed attuned with the pandemic conditions and relevant regulations in order to inform their important decision-making concerning health, safety, visa issues, and international travel. The study also highlights participants' cultural ways of information seeking and pragmatic approaches to information credibility assessment. Results from the study show the importance of understanding and empowering the information literacy of international students, especially during a global health emergency.

Capturing the Aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision in Google Search Results across the U.S.

How do Google Search results change following an impactful real-world event, such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision on June 24, 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade? And what do they tell us about the nature of event-driven content, generated by various participants in the online information environment? In this paper, we present a dataset of more than 1.74 million Google Search results pages collected between June 24 and July 17, 2022, intended to capture what Google Search surfaced in response to queries about this event of national importance. These search pages were collected for 65 locations in 13 U.S. states, a mix of red, blue, and purple states, with respect to their voting patterns. We describe the process of building a set of circa 1,700 phrases used for searching Google, how we gathered the search results for each location, and how these results were parsed to extract information about the most frequently encountered web domains. We believe that this dataset, which comprises raw data (search results as HTML files) and processed data (extracted links organized as CSV files) can be used to answer research questions that are of interest to computational social scientists as well as communication and media studies scholars.

ETHICS IN DYSTOPIA? DIGITAL ADAPTATION AND US MILITARY INFORMATION OPERATIONS

On November 22, 2022, Dr. Emma Briant, Associate Professor at Bard College (United States of America) presented on Ethics in Dystopia? Digital Adaptation and U.S. Military Information Operations. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS-Vancouver executives. They key points discussed were: 1) the need for enhancing digital literacy skills so that one can be resilient in the face of online information that conveys an existential threat; 2) the competition between the different forms of media prevailing today, and its impact on the online information environment; and 3) the differences between the U.S. and Canada in terms of strategic visions and legal frameworks as it pertains to media, information, and public diplomacy. Received: 2022-12-21Revised: 2023-01-03

Online Environmental Reporting: Does Ownership Structure Matter?

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the association between each ownership structure, firm attributes, and online environmental reporting (OER) in Malaysia. Two groups of variables are examined in this study; the first group presents an ownership structure consisting of two types of ownership- management, and government. The second group presents firm attributes which include five variables - company size, company leverage, company financial performance, industry type, and technology level. Data is collected from 100 listed companies’ annual reports (2018) as well as from their websites. Both Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS) and Two-stage Least Squares (2SLS) are used to examine the collected data and to solve any analytical problems such as endogeneity. The results generally show that the level of OER remains low and does not exceed 39% of the environmental disclosure index. Government ownership, company size, and company leverage show positive and significant relationships with OER, while other variables such as management ownership and company financial performance show negative and significant relationships with OER. however, the level of technology did not show any significant relationship. These findings support legitimacy theory as firms, in general, are consistently legitimizing their existence and operations by disclosing their online environmental information that shapes a good image in the minds of the interested parties who care about firms’ environmental activities. Regulators, on the other hand, may consider the results of this paper such as the significance of government ownership- to regulate and enhance the level of OER in Malaysia as it is yet on a voluntary based.

Analysis of Online Rumors during Covid-19 Pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, real and false information mingled. This resulted in audiences being unable to identify correct information and take effective action on it on time. Internet rumors can disturb people's emotions while damaging the government's credibility and reducing social trust. Internet rumors have fast-spreading characteristics, low cost of rumor creation, and strong concealment. It also has distinct structural and content characteristics. Information demand increases during a pandemic, and the public wants more information to safeguard life and prevent disease and has different levels of discernment about information. Rumor mongers create social chaos to achieve economic comeback and pathological psychological factors. The multi-channel development of new media facilitates the circulation of rumors. The legal system's imperfection gives spreaders opportunities to take advantage. These reasons increase the difficulty of regulation. This paper analyzes rumors' linguistic characteristics, causes, and effects. The authors focus on improving users' awareness of the law and responsibility, social media platforms to strengthen supervision, and actively advocating for users' correct use of information and participation in online supervision. Authoritative organizations improve laws to punish rumor makers and provide timely and practical information in three areas of recommendations to govern the spread of rumors and build a healthy online information environment.

Editorial: Data and Information in Online Environments

Editorial: Data and Information in Online Environments

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: A Survey

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has been widely applied in robotics and other vision applications, such as navigation and path planning for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). UAV navigation can be regarded as the process of robot planning to reach the target location safely and quickly. In order to complete the predetermined task, the drone must fully understand its state, including position, navigation speed, heading, starting point, and target position. With the rapid development of computer vision technology, vision-based navigation has become a powerful tool for autonomous navigation. A visual sensor can provide a wealth of online environmental information, has high sensitivity, strong anti-interference ability, and is suitable for perceiving dynamic environments. Most visual sensors are passive sensors, which prevent sensing systems from being detected. Compared with traditional sensors such as global positioning system (GPS), laser lightning, and ultrasonic sensors, visual SLAM can obtain rich visual information such as color, texture and depth. In this paper, a survey is provided on the development of relevant techniques of visual SLAM, visual odometry, image stabilization and image denoising with applications to UAVs. By analyzing the existing development, some future perspectives are briefed.

To Each Their Own: The Impact of Regulatory Focus on Consumers' Response to Online Information Load.

Contrary to the common view that more information is always better, too much information can damage decision quality. Building on existing literature, this study identified regulatory focus as a critical factor influencing the effect of information load (IL) on online consumer decisions and used event-related potentials (ERPs) to uncover its underlying neural mechanism. Behavioral data showed that promotion-focused participants would spend less time making purchasing decisions in the low IL condition than in the high IL condition. However, no significant difference was found for prevention-focused participants. In contrast to the high IL condition, ERP data indicated that the low IL condition recruited more attentional resources at the early stage of rapid automated processing (larger P2 component), leading to reduced long-term memory conflict (smaller N2 component), and resulting in enhanced decision confidence (larger P3 component) for those with a promotion focus. However, we observed either weakened or even opposite outcomes for those with a prevention focus. These findings generally shed light on when e-retailers should provide large/small amounts of product information in online environments.