Solutions for Digital Information Quality

We have come historically close to an important policy goal of our democratized information society. Thanks to the internet we have reached a state where information is created and accessed through multiple and diverse information sources. At the same time, this achievement raises new concerns in terms of quality issues. How can we ensure that users do not only have potential access to high quality information but can really harness and process such information? Addressing such concerns means taking measures on several layers. We are convinced that regulating information in its totality or setting uniform top-down quality standards are not appropriate ways to deal with information quality issues as it would endanger the openness and sustainability of the net. Information quality is complex. It requires consideration of different contexts, dimensions, and individual informational needs. Therefore, possible solutions should be reflected from various perspectives, including market, code, norm, and law perspectives.

Markets

- Reputation systems

- Quality labels, trustmarks

Social Norms

- Codes of conduct for bloggers, transparency

- Policies and guidelines at Wikipedia, Netiquette

Code

- Rating, filtering (ICRA, content advisor)

- Meta-data: tagging as a collaborative way to organize information according to folksonomies, (i.e. emergent grassroots taxonomies), see, e.g., Weinberger: Why Tagging Matters

- Specialized software to find content on hard drives, see Metz, PCMag: Conquer Information Overload (2003) (example of Jim Crowe, promoter at Atlantic records)

- Syndication, content aggregators, see Bradbury, FT: Might RSS Help To Solve Your Web Mess?

Law

- Disclosure standards in health regulation (quality standards, procedural requirements, etc.)

- Truth-in-advertising regulation

- Right to correct wrong information