The Issue of Trust
According to Kling and McKim (2000) (as cited in Matzat, 2009) there are two main barriers related to trust when it comes to researcher’s use of the Internet (see section 2.3.2.1.). The first one is about trusting the reliability of a posting because of the person who published it. About this, there was a clear tendency among the participants to trust information posted in social networks if they trust the person who published it. The use of real identities in social networks increases the trust on social networks in some degree. An element cited in order to face trust issues was that one’s information literacy skills play an important part in recognizing if a source is reputable. The second barrier expressed by Kling and McKim (2000) is about the possible damage to a researcher’s career by the posting of certain information; this is discussed on the “Negative Consequences” section
The participants expressed a good perception towards Wikipedia but at the same time were cautious. The professors stressed that as information sources they are complimentary to more traditional ones.
When asked how they would check the validity of some piece of information, the 8th participant stated that this can be an intuitive process difficult to explain and that sometimes is not even worth checking the validity, it will depend on our purposes and if we could trust the person who posted the hypothetical information. However, other participants suggested the following elements: checking the sources, checking the information via Google, see the author, who says what, what people said before this, see the profile of the source and the people who refer to this information, the style of writing, how many people shared the information could mean how many people believe in this, comments people make about it, own knowledge and judgment and use traditional resources like encyclopedias, reference sources, books and journals.
This question of deciding how to check validity is related to the decision making process, as stated by Jungermann (2000) (as cited in Berryman, 2008) (see section 2.3.2.2). The decision making process is made when the user considers his/her alternatives, choosing between them. To the participants this process can be intuitive, maybe they are not called to continue searching more information, as they can be satisfied with what they have or they decide to validate it by searching on Google, on traditional sources or make judgments based on the characteristics of the piece of information itself.