Narratives - Digital Information Quality

The rise of digital natives and their relationship to the internet raises questions with regard to digital information quality that are considerably distinct from quality conflicts in offline situations. Consider the following narratives for an illustration of such issues:

TVNewser

When people in the television news business want to catch up with the newest gossip in the industry, they turn to a blog called TVNewser. TVNewser was created three years ago by Brian Stelter, then an 18-year old digital native studying at Towson University. Brian initially concealed his identity so that his growing audience would take him seriously. People thought that he was a bald disgruntled 40-something executive and obsessively checked his blog to keep up with the latest news.

Today, Brian’s identity is revealed but the whole industry still pays attention to his blog. In the meanwhile, Brian is a senior majoring in mass communication and the editor of the student newspaper. By 9 am, he is awake and blogs about the newest gossip and events in the news media industry from his apartment as well as in class, the student union, and his desk in a corner of the newspaper office. Brian has earned the grudging trust of many of his readers, who e-mail him hundreds of Tipps a day that often translate into scoops. The biggest TV executives, such as Jonathan Klein, president of CNN’s national news division, look at this kid’s Web site all the time. Despite his youth and inexperience, Brian is generally thought of as a reliable reporter in the industry.

Source: Bosman, J.: The Kid With All the News About the TV News, in: The New York Times, 11/20/2006.

Dr. Google

My children have in recent weeks decided that they have leprosy, irritable bowel syndrome and Lyme disease.

“I’m contagious,” my 9-year-old said, looking up from the laptop on which she had just typed her symptoms one morning last week. “I shouldn’t go to school with strip throat.” “It’s strep throat,” I said, not looking up from my breakfast. “And you don’t have it. So go get dressed.”

In the old days, children dreaded a visit to the pediatrician, where getting a shot was always a possibility. But now that Dr. Google makes house calls, mine spend hours online typing queries into search boxes to investigate symptoms — “Mom, does this image of ringworm look like the thing on my leg?” — before printing out proof that they should not be required to walk the dog in the cold. Nobody is really sick at my house; the suspected ringworm turned out to be nothing more than an elastic mark from a sock. But my children definitely are exhibiting the symptoms of a new syndrome. By taking their symptoms online without the benefit of stethoscopes, much less medical degrees, they are following in the footsteps of plenty of grown-ups. As a host of recent studies show, a growing number of people — as many as 40 percent of the 39,000 adults surveyed for a 2006 Consumer Reports study — are researching their medical conditions online.

But those people are getting mixed results. According to the same survey, 41 percent of primary-care physicians reported that patients arrived in their office armed with bad information they found on the Internet. The American Medical Association, which warns that Web sites with inaccurate information may confuse people or even endanger their health, cautions patients not to consult Dr. Google instead of a real M.D.

Literally citation from: Amilias, C.: Visits to doctors who are not in, ever, in: The New York Times, 05/24/2007.

Rewriting History

Mr. Seigenthaler Sr., a U.S. journalist and former political aide, has read an entry about his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia where everybody can contribute. He was shocked to hear that he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Attorney General, who Seigenthaler had worked for as an assistant. The false information had been on the site for several months and an unknown number of people had read it, and possibly posted it on or linked it to other sites.

What is the value of Wikipedia and the nature of online information in general? To what extent is online information reliable? And who is accountable for bad quality information on the internet?

After his defamation, Mr. Seigenthaler found that his biographer was anonymous. He came to know that the writer was a customer of BellSouth Internet, but that federal privacy laws do not reveal the identity of Internet customers, even if they disseminate defamatory material.

Sources: Tech Chanel: Wikipedia to highlight quality issues, 2006. Seelye, K.: Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar, 12.06.2005.

Divided Opinions on Wikipedia

„I was at a college graduation ceremony yesterday, and when one of the student speakers mentioned Wikipedia the graduates broke into applause. "Now we can finally admit that we use Wikipedia for research," the speaker continued. That brought another round of cheers from the kids as well as some futile boos and hisses from parents and faculty." (Nicolas Carr)

Depending on your lights, Wikipedia is either one of the noblest experiments of the Internet age or a nightmare embodiment of relativism and the withering of intellectual standards.

Questions Raised From these Narratives

• Is the internet a reliable source of information?
• Can non-professionals really create high quality information? Why should they?
• Does the creation of low quality content by a vast number of amateurs dilute high quality online information?
• What role do offline credentials play in online situations?
• Can the abuse of offline brands harm the overall credibility of the internet?
• Can young, vulnerable information receivers be appropriately protected from low quality information?
• Who are the overall winners? Who are the loosers?