LECTURE 15: ‘INFORMATION PROCESSING AND CREDIBILITY IN THE AGE OF INTERNE’ Flashcards
Micro perspective
Focus on the individual processing of media
what is one of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy?
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)
why is this a challenge?
- 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
waarom worden news outlets gezien als bedreiging?
- 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.
Cyber-balkanization (definition)
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
Cyber-balkanization (key points)
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.
Echo chambers (definition)
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
Echo chambers (key points)
- Hearing our pre-existing beliefs repeated back to us.
- Reinforcement of attitudes.
- Little to no knowledge acquisition.
- Little to no contact with disagreement.
Leads to Selective exposure
- technology driven
- because we choose things we like
selective exposure: technology driven
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.
selective exposure: because we choose things we like
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.
Cognitive dissonance theory
= 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
self-selected exposure
deny or ignore conflicting information
The amount of choice is new.
selective exposure is driven by …?
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.
Attitude = key role in selective attention
Choose to consume information we agree with can maintain existing attitudes.
choose to consume information we agree with can make existing attitudes …
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)
Benefits of avoiding disagreeable information
o Protect us from inconsistent beliefs so less confusion.
o Protect us from cognitive dissonance.
Credibility problem selective exposure
- 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
credibility
‘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
Disintermediation
- 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.
Credibility judgements (metzeger&flanigan)
how do people make judgements about the credibility and accuracy of information they encounter online?
Metzeger & Flanigan use the term ‘disintermediation’ to discuss the process that forces individuals to evaluate the vast amounts of online information on their own.
Limited capacity model (choices) (Lang, 2000)
- 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.
Prominence- interpretation theory (Fogg, 2003)
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.
Prominence- interpretation theory
prominence part
Prominence=the cue
Prominence can be affected by:
o User characteristics
o Contextual factors
o The artefact itself (how does the website look)
