Credibility and the net

As I work through questions of “authority, authenticity, agency,” one of the issues that arises is that of credibility of information. Here’s a really comprehensive bibliography that focuses on credibility issues, put together by two researchers at UCSB who focus on that topic.

These researchers have already amassed significant research findings, among them:

"(a) perceptions of credibility differ across web site "genres": news organization web sites are rated highest in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, and personal web sites lowest; for the most part, ecommerce and special interest sites were rated in the middle; (b) credibility assessments appear to be due more to Web site attributes (e.g., design features, depth of content, and site complexity), than to familiarity with Web site "sponsors" such as organizations or individuals; (c) although people generally report verifying the web-based information they retrieve (especially among more experienced Internet users), actual observations of their online behaviors suggest that this is not the case; (d) men have been shown to rate both message credibility and site credibility significantly higher than women do; (e) women have been shown to rate the credibility of messages and web sites produced by women significantly lower than men do; (f) college students rely very heavily on the Web for both general and academic information, they expect this usage to increase over time, and they find information to be more credible than do people from a more general adult population; and (g) nonetheless, college students verify the information they find online significantly less than adults. Overall, these findings suggest the complexity of credibility and digital media."

I find all of these fascinating, and of course wish there had been similar work done in terms of credibility specifically in relation to religious information. But maybe that work is still to come?