CitizenSpin

What do you understand on the Internet?

“When people distrust media representations, they may seek out a wider range of information sources or they may ‘dismiss coverage’ altogether”.

A quote from a major literature review for the UK media regulator Ofcom (1). It pulls together a large body of research on media literacy amongst consumers.
While the report focuses on traditional broadcast media, it also mentions consumer comprehension of new media (web based, blogs, websites and chatrooms).

It says there is:

“an urgent need for investigation into the public’s understanding of innovative online news sources such as blogs.”

The researchers’ review of research literature found little understanding of how consumers understand the different ways in which web sites are funded – and how this may affect content.

Are consumers pretty savvy when it comes to spotting sites that are skewed by sponsorship and written by people with a vested interest? How do they make these kind of judgement decisions over what they can trust and can’t trust online?

Matt

(1) Livingstone, S., Van Couvering, E., & Thumim, N., (2004) Adult Media Literacy. A report compiled by the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics, for Ofcom

Believe the blog? What builds trust? What do readers understand?

In a comment on the previous post Trust the bloggers? Who can you believe online? Ben Haslem asks whether systems like those in place on Ebay would be of use in building trust in corporate web sites. - see Corporate Engagement. David Tebbutt also adds his own thoughts: "Chains of trust help. If someone I trust says they value someone else, the trust is inherited." He talks of links, word of mouth and referrals from sites like Technorati.
The current academic research into how people interpret and infer meaning from websites, chat rooms, bulletin boards or blogs, seems to be pretty limited. There has been some research focusing on how health information is presented to the public (1). This small-scale study investigated public trust in online medical information. The researchers developed a three-stage model of trust and primarily investigated the first two stages.
They found that users initially screen a web site assessing design, layout, colour, use of pop-up adverts, too much text, search facilities and corporate look. Secondly, users evaluated sites in more depth content becoming an influencing factor in trust. Sites which were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies or selling products were rejected at this stage.
It would seem that the consumer comprehension of content on the Internet is more sophisticated than simply using rating systems like that on Ebay. As David Tebbutt goes on to say: "If you arrive somewhere that appears good, maybe by following a Technorati pointer, surely you'd look around, to see what else they've written, who trackbacks to them, what sort of comments are made. All this is monumentally informative."

(1) Sillence, E., Briggs, P., Fishwick, L. & Harris, P., (2004) Trust and Mistrust of Online Health Sites. A paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, April 24-29 2004, Vienna, Austria.