Communicating Authority Online: Perceptions and Interpretations of Internet Credibility among College Students

Abstract

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.