Evaluating Web Resources

Web Credibility Defined Web credibility is about making your website in such a way that it comes across as trustworthy and knowledgeable. A credible website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business– webcredible.co.uk 52.8% of web users believe online information to be credible- UCLA.

Two Sides of Web Credibility As a website creator, you want to achieve optimal credibility on the Web. As a information consumer/user who is surfing the web, you want to understand how credible the information is.

Traditional Media on the Web Any one can publish on the Web and most traditional news media have a Web version to present their content. When you access sites of traditional media, you tend to think these websites are more credible. Example: nytimes.com, online.wsj.com, statesman.com, and latimes.com.

Benefits of Online Publishing Access to local, national, and international information. More opinions available. Up to date & On demand. Multimedia. Interactivity. Search.

Disadvantages & Differences of Online Publishing Anyone can publish, thus it is hard to assess credentials of online authors and sites. Sites could have hidden sponsorships or corporate affiliations- conflict of interest could arise. Advertisements can disguise themselves as other formats, such as a news article. Search engines drop you on a page of a website, leaving little reference of source or credibility. Information might be out-of-date. Information might be inaccurate of falsified- rumors spread easily on the Web.

Disadvantages & Differences of Online Publishing Multimedia, especially digital image, might be easily manipulated (into something it wasn’t). Difficult to enforce standards due to widespread of nature of the web. Media and journalists are expected to self police. Easy to change or update, thus previously published information can “disappear.” Lost in information- Information overload.

What do we do?

Checklist of Evaluating Web Credibility Content Authority Presentation

Checklist: Content Is the page complete or still under construction? What is the title of the page? When was it created, last updated? Who is the audience, is there any obvious bias or slant to the information? Are other sources of information available from the site? Are the links for the site internal or external sources? Do they all work properly? Do outside sources support the information? (journal articles, scholarly material, other news sources)

Checklist: Authority Who created the page? What are his/her credentials? Is there a means to contact the author? , phone, address? Discussion forums or other interactivity? What are their associations or affiliations? Does the site make that clear? Who is sponsoring the site? Is that clearly stated? What does domain name tell you about the site? Is it a.com,.gov,.edu, personal Web Page? Can you backtrack in the url to get more information about the site or author? Can you tell if the site is accurate? Are there references to outside sources of the information? Is there a non-Web version of the site? If not, this is not necessarily a detriment but can add or detract from credibility based on the reputation of the print medium.

Checklist: Presentation Is the site professional looking? Is it free of grammar, spelling and punctuation problems? Is the writing style appropriate for the topic? Is the format of the site meaningful and easy to use? Are there appropriate headings? Is navigation useful? How do images and sounds work on the site? How do they support the content? Could they have been edited? How did you find the site? Consider how the search engine works? For example, Alta Vista searches meta tags that are assigned by the author in the code and Yahoo uses a registration by author. Can you tell if news, editorial, and advertisements have separate presentations on the site? Look at the source code of the site. Is there anything in it that influences your impression? Meta tags, dates, comments, etc.

Exercise: Web Credibility Blog Post Work in groups of 3. Refer to Web Credibility assignment requirement sheet (from class or on course website: Post on course blog: