For example, last summer I had an expensive nascent surgical technique performed on my Achilles tendon. Before I went through with the procedure I went online to research its efficacy. Because they were unsupported by clinical trials and I value the scientific method, to begin, I dismissed all ‘alternative’ treatments and therapies Google produced.  Using various enhanced search techniques I queried Google scholar, and because I am aware of Google scholar’s limitations I searched other databases such as Web of Science. Because my University subscribes to various expensive medical journals I was able to access the latest research on the treatment of Achilles injuries. I looked at the research data and drew on my experience as a PhD student to examine its methods and credibility. Next, I consulted friends with some medical experience and expertise to make sure I was making the right decision.

The fact I was disposed to perform this research, the fact I trust science means this process of critically evaluating information online was influenced by norms and values. However, perhaps more importantly I was able to exploit the various forms of capital; technical, cultural, economic, and social at my disposal.

My research investigates how young people’s norms and values influence their critical thought about information online and what forms of capital  young people may have at their disposal. I believe the answers will have plenty to say about our education system and how forms of capital are unequally distributed across society.

There is discernible and growing anxiety in the mass media and academia about young people’s relationship with the web and the information it hosts. Whether it represents a genuine cause for concern (which requires intervention), a montage of discursive constructs or something in between is unresolved by the quality and coverage of the available evidence. However, deconstructing the discussion that represents this anxiety, analysing its existing supporting evidence and providing novel comparative evidence will make progress towards answering this question.

It is an important problem because the web is arguably the most significant communications invention since the printing press. Yet, contradictory, emblematic versions of it are in cultural circulation. For example, within popular science books by influential authors such as Keen and Carr, it is totemic for all that is said to be wrong with post-modern cultures; a web of networks of ignorant narcissists and amateurs who distort the truth for credulous users. Meanwhile, for Shirky and Weinberger, it is seen as a conduit for modern enlightenment values of expertise, open knowledge, progress and the wisdom of (informed) crowds that edifies its sophisticated users.  The web and its users are heterogeneous enough for both these versions of it to exist in reality simultaneously. However, which version best embodies how young people see and use the web in the UK?   This probably depends on various background and contextual influences many of which we know relatively little about. This is because the concepts and methods employed have disguised differences within age groups in favour of differences between age groups. This research applies a range of traditional and novel methodologies to diverse samples of 16-18 year olds in the UK and asks how do young people navigate and understand the web’s information landscape. It is anticipated that the results will tell us the differences between young people of the same age in the way the consult and exploit the web for information which have important implications for the way the web (and its place in the information landscape) is taught in schools and colleges.

Sub-questions that flow from this:

1. What/who are ‘young people’?
2. Is ‘young people’ a useful or sustainable category?
3. What is does the web mean to young people?
4. How do young people use the web?
5. What do young people use the web for?
6. Which parts of the web do they use for what?
7. How do young people use the web for information?
8. What do young people think information is?
9. What do they think mis and dis information is?
10. How do young people judge the credibility of the information that they engage with on the web?
11. Where do they source information?
12. What other sources do they use before or after going online?
13. What forms of knowledge do they value?
14. How do they make sense of the information that matters to them?
15. How do they use search engines to locate this knowledge?
16. What are differences between individual and group consensus – i.e. how is credibility socially constructed
17. Can young people decode the web’s socio-technical constructs they encounter?
18. Do they understand how the technology of the web works in that it can mediate the presentation of information?
19. How young people critically evaluate the way information is packaged, commodified, codified, and distributed on the web.

20. What are the sociological factors that influence all these processes?

The post-industrial society is often referred to as the “information society,” in which knowledge, and the information used to construct it, is crucial to the functioning of our civilisation. Of course, the Web, at least for now, coexists with all the sources of information that predated it. However, information online presents us with new dimensions to an old problem. There are anxieties about its quality, how it is packaged, commodified, codified, distributed, interpreted, and operationalised. Dysfunctional information online is said to represent a profound risk to society. Deliberative democracy, social cohesion, our values and even our health is in jeopardy. Nothing is immune; there is even said to be a risk our sense of identity will be corrupted by dysfunctional information online because as, a Demos report said, the Web is “central to forming our attitudes our beliefs our views about the world sense of who we are within it”.

My research asks:

How do young people interpret information online?

Is there really access without discernment?

Is there a problem with dysfunctional information online?

Who says it’s a problem? Why is it a problem? Why it is dysfunctional? Why does it matter it’s online? What’s unique and novel about the Web?

Is the best solution to teach young people to think critically about information on the Web? If so, how?

Young people’s Web usage has been widely problematised by characterising their behaviour online in terms which demand policy interventions. The emergence of the term ‘Digital Native’ in the 2000’s epitomised this phenomenon. It used to suggest a generation of young people with a set of self-acquired skills and competencies poorly served by existing educational curricula.  More recently, however, even Prensky, the progenitor of the term ‘Digital Native’ writes of young people lacking “digital wisdom”[1]. This claim that has been supported in the UK media regulator’s report into children’s digital literacy[2] and a policy think tank’s research [3]. Thus, we see the emergence of  a new paradigm, describing young people as credulous users incapable of critical thinking who need support from the education system to develop this skill and be more ‘savvy’.

This research begins with the proposition that these polarised stereotypes are unhelpful in understanding young people’s relationship with the Web and potentially dangerous in driving policy interventions founded on inadequate evidence. Following a discussion of the recent claims, and the evidence offered, this paper describes the findings of a qualitative study of young people’s Web practices, which explored the differences and similarities between two groups of young people from contrasting socio-economic backgrounds.  The findings suggest that young people’s skills and competencies are distinctly sensitive to different contextual influences including family, peers and education, and that these skills are differentiated rather than homogenous as earlier debates have implied.  In theoretical terms,  these different Web skills can be seen as an expression of what Bourdieu has called ‘habitus’, through which young people find ways to  operate effectively within their particular structured social space or ‘field’. These findings  have potentially significant implications for understanding digital literacy and for ensuring appropriate policy interventions.

Credibility can be understood as a dialogue of socially constructed concepts such as authority and expertise embedded in a collection of institutions and normative practices. This means when a person makes even a routine decision about what represents credible information by, for example, referring to the author of some text, she may evoke her mental, culturally encoded, model of expertise. In many knowledge domains there is no objective, incontestable definition of expertise .

There are some recurring reasons given by the research community for problematising credibility and which are also used to predicate interventions in form of influence and control over such normative practices. These reasons arguably reveal an anxiety about the integrity of what Foucault called ‘episteme’ or the set of procedures that produce and circulate knowledge in our society. These reasons are as follows:

1. The Web has no ‘gatekeepers’ (arbiters of quality who uphold the principles of knowledge) therefore counter-factual pseudo-knowledge is rampantly circulating online.
2. The provenance of information is obfuscated in the Web’s many layers of socio-technical constructs such as digital reproduction, hyperlink referrals, and paywalls.
3. There is an unprecedented burden on members of the public to discriminate between the truth and what masquerades as the truth.
4. Some members of the public are less capable than others at decoding digital information and therefore liable to be misled.

In short, naive people need help in discerning the truth.

For Foucault, each society has its regime of truth. In our society, the regime is centred on the form of scientific discourse[1]. To illustrate this, he used an historical analysis to demonstrate scientific truths associated with the diagnosis of madness have been socially constructed. The result was, according to Foucault, the truth about madness changed over time because it was unstable; vulnerable to the application of power.

Today’s sociology of science is a sociology of scientific knowledge. Its focus of attention is also what science claims to be the truth [2]. The academic scientific community itself is reluctant to deal in culturally-loaded terms such as truth – preferring to insist science is always work in progress and the truth is only the best working hypothesis. However, Foucault’s concern is not with the practice of science but the way it is interpreted and deployed. This is not to say, from his perspective, the language used by the scientific community is not discursive. For example, the word anthropogenic, which is central to the climate change debate, is of course, a technical term synthesised from Greek and Latin. The use of such technical language sets out an ‘epistemological space’ for scientists – it is a space where ‘people like them’ are equipped to ‘know best’[2]. To lend credibility to their arguments, climate change sceptics for example engage with this discourse by requisitioning the same language.  Similarly the language of homeopathy and Intelligent Design borrows technical, scientific terms. Setting aside religious discourse which deliberately separates itself into its own ‘spiritual’ domain, science is the dominant script and primary arbiter of truth in our culture.

For Foucault, science’s regime of truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. Science, because it is discursive and at least perceived to be an arbiter of truth becomes a lever of power. In this, Foucault may have been influenced by Durkheim’s observations concerning belief systems including modern science as systems of social regulation. However, he develops this idea in much more depth by describing how science’s effective regime of truth is mobilised in our society, the specifics of which rest on capitalism and its circular relation with systems of power [1]. To begin with, it is subject to constant economic and political incitement (demand) [1]. For example, scientific research is commissioned to make the NHS more cost-effective or manage public health. The research is then produced under the control of a few sanctioned political, academic and economic apparatuses [1] such as think tanks,  universities and pharmaceutical corporations. Next, it becomes the object of immense diffusion and consumption [1]. That is to say the research is disseminated through journals, press releases, interpolated into popular media, and shared on social media.  It then becomes the issue of political debate and social confrontation (ideology struggles)[1], for example disputes about whether or not certain treatments should be made available on the NHS at the tax payer’s expense.

Anyone who wishes to challenge this regime must engage with or simulate science’s practices and discourse. Examples of this phenomenon range from Gillian McKeith calling herself a Doctor to the American oil industry producing an entire body of its own research to lobby politicians about the ‘truth’ about climate change[3]. In the UK, in knowledge domains, such as climate science and naturalism, the perceived consensus amongst the academic scientific community is often contested by marginal voices that have much greater influence in the US. There, organised political groups often argue academic science arrogantly claims a monopoly on the truth and they produce their own ‘science’ to dispute it. Apart from finding a receptive audience, their success in doing so often depends upon the amount of power they possess to for example disseminate their information in the media and influence public policy.

In becoming the perhaps the world’s preeminent media platform, the Web has provided another arena to contest credibility. It is a very complex environment because there are many human-encoded technological solutions as well as human agents  operating in an array of knowledge domains by influencing and challenging notions of credibility.

An example of a human-encoded technological agent is Google’s search engine. It is undoubtedly, one of the Web’s most powerful institutions. Research within the field of credibility has shown, for many people, Google’s search engine is their portal to the Web and they trust its output to the extent its search algorithms and commercially manipulated search results confer credibility on websites[4]. This supports Foucault’s proposal that power is performed – i.e. embedded in normative practices such as searching for content on the Web. Google’s power influences the practice of judging credibility. The solution to this problem either explicitly stated or tacitly suggested in virtually all the credibility research is more influence and control over such normative practices via technology and pedagogy. Therefore, interpreting Google’s search results becomes a struggle for codification. Google’s commercial success depends on its users trusting its search results. Meanwhile, academics researching credibility call for schools to teach scepticism of Google’s search results in the form of media ‘literacy’ or ‘fluency’.

However, for Foucault individuals or human agents are vehicles of power not its points of application. A young person’s belief in counter-knowledge such as a conspiracy theory may be localised within online interactions with peers and adults in communities such as forums and social networks. Although he died before the Web, Foucault recognised power is something that circulates within such communities employed and exercised through a “net-like” [5] organisation. An influential person (or what Gladwell called a Maven) may be a vehicle of power in the way he propagates counter-knowledge throughout a social network.

Foucault can help understand how academia has established its position in relation to negotiable credibility on the Web. The process begins with librarians, information scientists, sociologists and educationalists writing about credibility to claim the territory for their discipline or area of expertise. The language of their credibility research then develops its own discursive formation[5]. For example, it often juxtaposes youth and vulnerability. Foucault is instructive on this process: all discourses have a subtext, a way things should be. The academic credibility discourse concludes youth should be given the tools and skills to navigate to the ‘truth’ amongst all the counterfactual nonsense on the Web. Thus, the credibility research can be conceived as a discursive response to the power of the Web and its dominant institutions and other users to influence young people. However, any attempt to wield authority to remedy this problem may produce resistance and further dysfunctional credibility judgements.

This is because institutionalised pedagogy can, for Foucault, also be framed as an expression of power. He argues such power is always productive in that it brings about forms of behaviour. Therefore, where there is power, there is resistance to power: resistance is written in the exercise of power. For example, searches for particular topics on Google can produce URLs for conspiracy theory websites in the first page of results. The fact that some young people find conspiracy theories on the Web attractive[6] could be because they are resisting what they see are hegemonic interpretations of the world imposed on them by an educational establishment. Conspiracy theories, in this instance become a hidden transcript – a critique of power behind the back of the dominant. In credibility research, young people are often characterised as vulnerable to indoctrination but Foucault’s conception of power entices us to consider young people on the social web as active citizens – agents resisting power rather than passive dupes.

[1]      M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

[2]      M. David, “You Think Bart Simpson is Real. I Know He’s Only an Actor!,” Current Sociology, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 517-534, Jul. 2008.

[3]      A. M. Dunlap, R. E., & McCright, “Climate change denial: Sources, actors, strategies,” in handbook of climate change and society, C. Lever-Tracy, Ed. ). Abingdon: Routledge., 2010, pp. pp. 240–259.

[4]      L. Fullerton, E. Menchen-trevino, and K. Y. Thomas, “Trust Online : Young Adults ’ Evaluation of Web Content °,” Journal of Communication, vol. 4, pp. 468-494, 2010.

[5]      S. Mills, Routledge Critical Thinkers Michel Foucault. London: Routledge, 2003.

[6]      K. Kelton, K. R. Fleischmann, and W. A. Wallace, “Trust in Digital Information,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 363-374, 2008.

Take a close look at this – the only research referred to is here. Apparently, I don’t need an iPad2 – I can sit in an empty room, imagine tapping its interface and playing Angry Birds and it will have the same profound effect on my brain as doing it in reality.

Also, take a look this - social networking sites are causing a chilling lack of empathy in a whole generation of young people. I am now wondering how many 20^th century genocides  occurred without social networking and thinking about a new book  “Facebook – The Rise of The Sociopaths”.

Anyway, what’s the point of all this? Technology has always been an ideological battleground played out in health, education, work, the family – every field of policy. Web Science has an important job in informing opinion with proper research about technology – take a look at the Lords Debate again – how many times do they ask for more research?

Some people are ‘better’ at driving cars than others. Formula One drivers are rewarded for their supernormal skills. Their job, of course, involves a lot of repetition but arguably the winner of the race, team strategy aside, will be the driver who efficiently adapts to new situations. But where does this skill or expertise come from?  Are they better able to read the road, predict opponents’ moves or better able to concentrate on repeating the same processes. Are they good because they have just been practicing a lot – put in the 10,000 hours? Or are there more monadic factors at play such as talent? Or semi-monadic factors such as intelligence?

What’s all this got to do with credibility?

Basic credibility decisions involve learnt skills – e.g. verify the information with another source.

More complex judgments involve some interpolation of cultural norms and values – e.g. this information is credible because its conclusions are a result of the scientific method.

Extremely complex judgments require a certain level of expertise, adaption and intelligence.

Do higher order credibility judgements require a level of intelligence that can’t be taught? Is the best we can hope for that educators transfer to students a consistent process that may facilitate and scaffold the unravelling of complexity in the intelligent and ensure less “intelligent” students at least know the rules of “the road”?

Are they prone to believe misinformation, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories?

How are techies responding to these issues – are they proposing an unrealistic technical solution?

What, if anything, do young people look for when deciding what’s credible?

Can these things that suggest credibility on the Web be easily faked?

Is this something we should be worried about?

If we should be worried about this, are we just assuming young people are idiots who can’t make intelligent decisions?

Do we always worry about the corrupting influence of new technology regardless of the empirical evidence?

Is this death of Reithianism?

Is the future of the Internet networks of ignorant narcissists broadcasting to each other?

Or worse, communities of virtual Amish rejecting anyone’s point of view but their own?

Or am I am indulging in the intellectual hysteria that always accompanies rapid change?

Or, even worse, I am just spouting the sort of crap media-friendly “academics” love?

“A new class of service provider will emerge that will create and market service elements that can be applied across multiple sectors. These elements will be aggregated together in any number of ways by a ‘broker’, to provide the end user with contextually aware applications and decision support services.” Technology Strategy Board

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This project will begin by exploring historic and contemporary anxieties around new media and technology. Many of the threats to individuals and civilisation associated with the Web have been played out in the past with other technology such as radio and television. This research intends to describe how and why people’s perceived inability to make credibility judgments on the Web has become one these concerns. A deeper analysis will consider whether credibility judgement is a ‘skill’, a practice, or the transmission of cultural values. In doing so, it will explore the social construction of credibility and its components; including perceptions of trust, provenance, expertise, authority and reliability and investigate how other disciplines, such as information and computer science, have approached credibility.

Credibility and Youth

Such anxieties inevitably coalesce around notions of vulnerable or ill-equipped youth. This research will therefore explore the historic and contemporary discourse about young people’s skills and competencies with Web technology and go on to investigate policy and educational responses to the question of skills and competencies.

Research

The next stage of the project will be to develop a dynamic methodology for capturing the credibility judgments young people make online that is robust and scalable so it will be able to harvest qualitative data on a large scale from multiple locations. The data should help identify the technical and cultural signifiers young people look for when they are deciding what credible information is and determine if their peers and authority figures influence them in their decisions about credibility. Further aims for the research are to capture, for analysis, young people’s responses to Semantic Web technology intended to enhance the credibility of online news and eventually develop software educators can use to facilitate the pedagogy of evaluating information on the Web through negotiation and collaboration