Papers
Communicating authority online: Perceptions and interpretations of Internet credibility among college students
Lackaff, D., & Cheong, P. H. (2008). Communicating authority online: Perceptions and interpretations of Internet credibility among college students. Open Communication Journal, 2, 143-155.
This paper discusses how students understand and interpret credibility in their search for online information, especially in relation to websites such as Wikipedia, which present new approaches to authority and information management. Based on focus group and survey data, we found that source authority is not a major determinant in students' informational evaluations, in contrast to some previous research. Due to the difficulty of reliably determining source characteristics and to compensate for this perceived lack of authority, students corroborate information with additional sources and employ other heuristic strategies. Wikipedia poses an interesting epistemological challenge as it represents a relatively novel form of authority and information creation – open editing by semi-anonymous visitors to the site. We find that student credibility assessments are highly pragmatic, and present an expanded model of assessment that accounts for the contemporary communication on the web, with implications for communication researchers and educators.
Like (6)We’re all stars now: Reality television, Web 2.0, and mediated identities
Stefanone, M. A., Lackaff, D., & Rosen, D. (2008). We’re all stars now: Reality television, Web 2.0, and mediated identities. In the Proceedings of ACM’s nineteenth annual Hypertext and Hypermedia, 107-112. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press.
Social cognitive theory suggests a likely relationship between the rising popularity of both reality television and social networking sites. This research utilized a survey (N=456) of young adults to determine the extent to which reality television consumption explains user behavior in the context of social network sites. Results show a consistent relationship between reality television consumption on the length of time spent logged on to these sites, the size of user's networks, the proportion of friends not actually met face to face, and photo sharing frequency while controlling for age, gender and education. Other categories of television viewing like news, fiction, and educational programming were not related to user's online behavior.
An analysis of topical coverage of Wikipedia
Halavais, A., & Lackaff, D. (2008). An analysis of topical coverage of Wikipedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, 429-440.
Many have questioned the reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia. Here a different issue, but one closely related: how broad is the coverage of Wikipedia? Differences in the interests and attention of Wikipedia's editors mean that some areas, in the traditional sciences, for example, are better covered than others. Two approaches to measuring this coverage are presented. The first maps the distribution of topics on Wikipedia to the distribution of books published. The second compares the distribution of topics in three established, field-specific academic encyclopedias to the articles found in Wikipedia. Unlike the top-down construction of traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia's topical coverage is driven by the interests of its users, and as a result, the reliability and completeness of Wikipedia is likely to be different depending on the subject-area of the article.
Reality television as a model for online behavior: Blogging, photo, and video sharing
Stefanone, M. & Lackaff, D. (2009). Reality television as a model for online behavior: Blogging, photo, and video sharing. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14, 964-987.
This research explores traditional mass media as an antecedent to nondirected self-disclosure online. New Internet-based tools allow users to communicate with global audiences, and to make intimate personal information available to this audience. At the same time, a culture that rewards the public performance of private thoughts and emotions is increasingly evident in "reality" television (RTV) programming. This study used survey data to examine RTV consumption, authoritarianism, and users' offline social context as potential antecedents for nondirected self-disclosure via blogs, online photo sharing, and online video sharing. RTV consumption correlated with blogging and video sharing, but not photo sharing. Social support network size was a significant correlate of photo sharing, indicating that photo sharing may be a more relational activity.
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