LECTURE 15: ‘INFORMATION PROCESSING AND CREDIBILITY IN THE AGE OF INTERNE’

Question 1

Micro perspective

Answer 1

Focus on the individual processing of media

Question 2

what is one of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy?

Answer 2

the degree to which we do not share a common baseline of facts. We are operating in completely different information universes. We think differently in what is true and what isn’t. We live in bubbles. We don’t agree in what is true or not. People value information different. (Barack Obama 2018)

Question 3

why is this a challenge?

Answer 3

• A high choice environment, with individual autonomy over their exposure to information. (a lot of different sources with different topics and interpretations)
• Highly opinionated and contentious information
• (potentially) inaccurate information

Question 4

waarom worden news outlets gezien als bedreiging?

Answer 4

• News outlets are opinionated and fragmented.
• (Potentially inaccurate information
• Wordt gezien als een bedreiging, want wie kan zeggen wat waar is en wat niet waar is. How easily can you as a person be misinformed if you are not an expert.

Question 5

Cyber-balkanization (definition)

Answer 5

Disintegrating countries which are in conflict. Describe a system which is fragmenting and falling apart. People don’t work together.
- Fragmentation of the media landscape, especially online
- Rise of niche media (media outlets –> cover specific topics)
- Return of opinion driven news

Question 6

Cyber-balkanization (key points)

Answer 6

o Fragmentation of the media landscape, especially online.
o Rise of niche media, focus on only a couple of subjects.
o Return of opinion-driven news.

Question 7

Echo chambers (definition)

Answer 7

Increases the change for a person to be confronted with only one side of news and opinions. People are not confronted anymore with different opinions.
- Hearing our pre existing beliefs repated back to us
- Reinforcement of attitudes
- Little to no knowlegde acquisition
- Little to no contact with disagreement

Question 8

Echo chambers (key points)

Answer 8

• Hearing our pre-existing beliefs repeated back to us.
• Reinforcement of attitudes.
• Little to no knowledge acquisition.
• Little to no contact with disagreement.

Question 9

Leads to Selective exposure

Answer 9

1. technology driven
2. because we choose things we like

Question 10

selective exposure: technology driven

Answer 10

o Partly caused by algorithms (selective exposure)
▪ Give us wat we agree with
▪ Hide what we disagree with
▪ Surround us with like-minded people and sources.

Question 11

selective exposure: because we choose things we like

Answer 11

we choose things that we like and feel comfortable with. Tendency to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding thing we don’t like.

Question 12

Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 12

= contradictable beliefs, when a person experiences conflicting thoughts, beliefs, or values that create mental discomfort or psychological stress.
- For example: you want to go to the sun, it is easy to take a plane. You read an article that planes are very polluting. You feel cognitive dissonance between these ideas.
- Smoking is bad. You know this so but you keep smoking –> discomfort –> rationalizing that you only smoke occaisonally to reduce the discomfort

Question 13

self-selected exposure

Answer 13

deny or ignore conflicting information
The amount of choice is new.

Question 14

selective exposure is driven by …?

Answer 14

attitudes

• An attitude is a summary judgement of a target.
• Idea that we know stuff about a topic or person, we also have an evaluation, positive or negative ideas with this knowledge.
• Tendency to favor information that is in line with our attitudes, which is in line with ideas that we already have.

Question 15

Attitude = key role in selective attention

Answer 15

Choose to consume information we agree with can maintain existing attitudes.

Question 16

choose to consume information we agree with can make existing attitudes …

Answer 16

o More detailed (adding new beliefs)
o More secure (more stable, interconnected beliefs)
o More accessible (available in memory)
o More extreme (stronger evaluation, we still don’t know why this is the case. People that read more one-sided information, get more extreme in their opinion)

Question 17

Benefits of avoiding disagreeable information

Answer 17

o Protect us from inconsistent beliefs so less confusion.
o Protect us from cognitive dissonance.

Question 18

Credibility problem selective exposure

Answer 18

• Makes us less skeptical in credibility assess.
• We don’t question quality or credibility if we agree on a certain subject
• We don’t feel the urge to do that if we agree with information. Because we think it doesn’t help us to question things that we agree with

Question 19

credibility

Answer 19

‘The believability of information, and it rests largely on the trustworthiness and expertise of the information source or message, as interpreted by the information receiver.’

Based on:
- Quality of information
- Authority
- Trust

Question 20

Disintermediation

Answer 20

• Forces individuals to evalute the vast amount of online information on their own.
• Coming from consumer industries. In order for a person to buy a product, that person don’t need to go through a middle person. Middle person is taken out. We don’t need to make use of established news papers or other organization. News straight from source, people dropping videos and articles. News agency is taken out.

Question 21

Credibility judgements (metzeger&flanigan)
how do people make judgements about the credibility and accuracy of information they encounter online?

Answer 21

Metzeger & Flanigan use the term ‘disintermediation’ to discuss the process that forces individuals to evaluate the vast amounts of online information on their own.

Question 22

Limited capacity model (choices) (Lang, 2000)

Answer 22

• People have a limited capacity for the cognitive processing of information.
• People engage in the processing of information.

They use this for:
▪ Decoding: understanding and interpret the message

▪ Storage: ‘In’ ‘working memory’, the cognitive system with a limited capacity. (use to decode messages, try to understand what is actually said in the message)

▪ Retrieval:using it for further actions.

▪ People make conscious or automatic choices how much resources can be allocatedprocessing of information.

Question 23

Prominence- interpretation theory (Fogg, 2003)

Answer 23

Iterative process of:
▪ Noticing a cue (prominence)
▪ Making a judgement about a cue
▪ We keep doing it until we are satisfied, Until we are done.
▪ Because we have reached an overall evaluation that we are satisfied with
▪ Or, because of constraints, such as a lack of time
▪ We zoeken naar iets tot dat we tevreden zijn, en dan stoppen we met zoeken naar een cue.

Question 24

Prominence- interpretation theory
prominence part

Answer 24

Prominence=the cue
Prominence can be affected by:
o User characteristics
o Contextual factors
o The artefact itself (how does the website look)

Question 25

Prominence- interpretation theory
interpretation cue

Answer 25

interpretation=evaluation part
Interpretation can be affected by:
o Previous assumptions
o (Cultural) background
o Prior experiences / knowledge
o Goals

Question 26

Dual processing models of information processing (2 models)

Answer 26

-Elaboration likelihood model (central route) (petty and cacioppo, 1981)
▪ Motivation (we need to be motivated to process information)
▪ Ability (time, cognitive capacity)

-Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
▪ Systematic: discern credibility by considering more deeply a wider range of author, message, or medium cues
▪ Heuristic: relying on a faster examination of credibility

Question 27

Heuristics

Answer 27

= mental shortcuts we can use to more easily draw conclusions

• Efficient way to establish credibility.
• Use strategies that minimize our cognitive efforts.

Question 28

Some challenges for credibility evaluations since we have networked technologies

Answer 28

1. The amount of information is infinite.
2. Online information may be less filtered or selected.
3. Online information may lack ‘authority indicators.
4. There are no or only a few standards for quality control.
5. Conflation of content types
6. Context deficit leading to source confusion.
7. Often many ‘targets’ for credibility evaluation.

Question 29

Motivated people should check websites on ..

Answer 29

• Accuracy: the degree to which a website is free of errors
• Authority: who is the author and is (s)he credible
• Objectivity: why is the text written?
• Currency: how up to date is the text?

Question 30

The reputation heuristic

Answer 30

o When having to believe between sources, people are more likely to believe the familiar source over an unfamiliar one, regardless of the actual content.
o Recognition heuristics

Question 31

The endorsement (goedkeuring) heuristic

Answer 31

o When having to believe sources, people are more likely to believe a source that is also trusted by (many) others.
o cf. the bandwagon heuristic [if others think something is true, then it must be true]

Question 32

Consistency heuristic

Answer 32

o When choosing what to trust, check to what extent information is consistent over various sources.

Question 33

Self-confirmation heuristic

Answer 33

o People perceive information as credible when it is in line with pre-existing beliefs, and not credible if it counters previous beliefs.

Question 34

Expectancy violation heuristic

Answer 34

o When a source fails to meet expectations.
o People are more likely to judge a website as not credible when:
▪ The website asks form information you did not expect.
▪ Website has a sloppy layout, typo’s, factual mistakes.

Question 35

Persuasive intent heuristic

Answer 35

o Information that seems biased is not believed to be credible.
o Advertisements suffer from negative credibility cues:
▪ Doctors work for the pharmaceutical industry.
▪ Vs normal people promoting healthy food have nothing to gain by doing so
▪ ‘Feeling deceived’

Question 36

Are there big differences in how people deal with credibility judgement, and their concern about credibility?
(demographics)

Answer 36

No, not really:
▪ Marginal differences in that the internet users that were more concerned about credibility were slightly more often.
* older (but at the same time, they found Internet information slightly more believable)
* female
* higher educated.

Question 37

Are there big differences in how people deal with credibility judgement, and their concern about credibility?
(personality characteristics)

Answer 37

A bit more:
▪ People that were more concerned about credibility of information on the internet
scored
* Higher on need for cognition.
* Low on social trust in others online.
* Lower faith in intuition.

Question 38

The warranting theory (Stone, 1995)

Answer 38

• more likes etc, the more likely people will base their judgement based on others and less look at the actual content.
• Information that cannot easily be manipulated is seen as more credible.
• Self-descriptions are less reliable then descriptions by others –> higher warrenting value

Question 39

Attitude (definiton)

Answer 39

“A summary judgement of a target; a collection of beliefs about a person, group, issue, or object, plus the positivite/negative evaluation of those beliefs”