Paradoxes of the Web: The Ethical Dimensions of Credibility

Library Trends, Wntr, 2001 by Nicholas C. Burbules

ABSTRACT

THIS ESSAY REVIEWS THE ISSUES SURROUNDING determinations of the credibility of online materials. The author argues, first, that the World Wide Web, and the larger Internet, comprise some very difficult and distinctive features that make conventional ways of assessing credibility adequate only within a fairly bounded frame; second, that beyond this bounded frame, standard credibility measures encounter some paradoxical and self-undermining consequences; third, that this picture is complicated further by the fact that "credibility" actually covers several very different sorts of factors, not all of them matters of judging truth and falsity per se; and therefore, fourth, that the assessment of credibility needs to address the social and normative factors that actually shape the character and quality of online information. These considerations combine to reveal an ethical dimension to many credibility assessments.

INTRODUCTION

One of the most-discussed topics about the World Wide Web is how users can be expected to assess the credibility of information they find there. This is not surprising since a key feature of new networked information and communication systems is that the sources of information found online are sometimes difficult to ascertain. The Web seems to offer a global reference resource but, because of its very scope, it seems to overwhelm the ordinary conventions by which people informally judge the merit of what they read or hear. Teaching users how to become more critical and discerning is an important educational objective for learners of all ages (Bruce, 2000; Burbules & Callister, 2000).

Yet this goal is complicated by the fact that the Web is not an ordinary reference system; it poses some unique and, in many respects, unprecedented conditions that complicate the task of sorting out dependable from undependable information--and even complicates the notion that we have a clear sense of that distinction. How to differentiate credible from fraudulent information is not a new problem, but unraveling these in the context of a vast rapidly changing networked system is.

At a first level, the problems do not seem very different from more familiar text-based or oral contexts. Certainly we are making credibility judgments all the time: Is this person a reliable expert? Does this source have a bias or an axe to grind? Is this information outdated? Does this new information fit with what I already know about a topic? and so on. There are dozens of Web sites already devoted to assessing credibility, and they offer good sensible advice such as: Use the return address or URL to determine the source of the information. Check the "last updated" date to see if the information is current. Triangulate multiple sources of information before you believe something based on what just one source has told you. These are all well and good and, in a large number of cases, will suffice to sort out incorrect, misleading, incomplete, or deceptive information. For learners of a certain age, they are useful rules of thumb, and they are certainly better than nothing. But such standards fail as we consider issues of greater complexity and difficulty, and indeed at some point we realize that they lead us into a series of paradoxes that begin to shatter the notion of "credibility" itself. At that point we are thrown back to much more uncertain tentative methods by which to judge what we find on the Web. Yet this instability itself has something important to teach us about the nature of this new information and communication environment.

Three conditions make the Web, and the larger Internet in which it operates, a different and challenging credibility context. First, there is the problem of sheer volume. A Web search could pull up thousands, or even millions, of "hits" to which one might further add newsgroups, listservs, and e-mail as sources of information on a topic. The numbers are overwhelming. Now, of course, a library can be overwhelming too, as can dozens of news media sources (I write this in the midst of a close presidential campaign and, despite the importance of this subject, it is impossible to find clear unambiguous information on the status of the candidates--each poll gives conflicting numbers, every analysis argues that one or the other has an "edge" in the final election, every assessment of their proposals gives a different calculation of their fiscal costs and benefits, and so on). None of this seems very new. What is new is that the growth and decentered nature of the Web, and the larger Internet, has put the means of providing information in the hands of many more people. Referencing and organizational systems that are available, for example, in libraries, do not exist here. The markers of institutional credibility and authority, the lines of tradition that allow viewers to judge media sources or publishers, for example, have not been settled yet. There is an even greater capacity to locate information that will tend to confirm one's existing views and prejudices rather than challenge them. In all this, the scope of the network and its deregulated content overwhelm the ordinary idea that we can comparatively judge different sources (which ones?), or that we can trust popular processes of selection to weed out the less credible and give status to the survivors.