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ARTICLE FEEDBACK TOOL: SUPPORTING CREDIBILITY EVALUATIONS ON WIKIPEDIA

Looge, Welmoed (2013) ARTICLE FEEDBACK TOOL: SUPPORTING CREDIBILITY EVALUATIONS ON WIKIPEDIA.

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Abstract:The Internet allows users to upload or edit information anonymously. One of the most well-known examples of this principle is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Because the true source of the information is hard to determine, users often do not know how to evaluate credibility of the information. A possible solution to help users evaluate the credibility of information is through the use of a decision support system, which can provide the user with an advice about the credibility of the information. This thesis focuses on the Article Feedback Tool, a rating system that is being developed by Wikipedia to improve article quality. This tool could potentially function as a decision support system, and therefore this thesis studies whether it influences people’s credibility evaluations. Furthermore, we investigated whether the placement of the Article Feedback Tool has any effect on credibility evaluations. In the experiment, participants were asked to read Wikipedia articles and to answer questions about them and about their trust in the articles. Analysis showed no influence of the Article Feedback Tool on the participants’ credibility evaluations at all. Therefore, we argue that the Article Feedback Tool is not used as support system in its current form nor in the more visually prominent form that we tested in the experiment. However, all participants were academic students and they generally were able to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality information based on their information skills. This may indicate that people who possess information skills have no need for a support system in evaluating credibility. We therefore recommend that future research should study whether or not the Article Feedback Tool does support credibility evaluations in people with less trained information skills.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64118
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