Trustworthiness of web information evaluation framework

Abstract

Assessing the quality of information on the Web is a challenging issue for at least two reasons. Firstly, there is little control over publishing quality. Secondly, when assessing the trustworthiness of Web pages, users tend to base their judgements upon subjective criteria such as the visual presentation of the website, rather than rigorous criteria such as the author's qualifications or the source's review process. As a result, Web users tend to make incorrect assessments of the trustworthiness of the Web information they are consuming. Also, they are uncertain of their ability to make a decision whether to trust information they are not familiar with. This research addresses this problem by collecting and presenting metadata based on useful practice trustworthiness criteria, in order to support the users' evaluation process for assessing the trustworthiness of Web information during their information seeking processes.

In this thesis, we propose the Trustworthiness of Web Information Evaluation (TWINE) application framework, and present a prototype tool that employs this framework for a case study of academic publications. The framework gathers and provides useful information that can support users' judgments of the trustworthiness of Web information. The framework consists of two layers: the presentation layer and the logic layer. The presentation layer is composed of input and output modules, which are the modules that interface with the users. The logic layer consists of the trustworthiness criteria and metadata creation modules. The trustworthiness criteria module is composed of four basic criteria, namely: authority, accuracy, recency and relevance. Each criterion consists of the items, called indicators, in order to indicate the trustworthiness of Web information based on their criteria. The metadata creation module gathers and integrates metadata based on the proposed criteria that will then be used in the output module in order to generate the supportive information for users. The framework was evaluated based on the tool, using an empirical study. The study set a scenario that new postgraduate students search for publications to use in their report using the developed tool. The students were then asked to complete a questionnaire, which was then analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods.

The results from the questionnaire show that the confidence level of users when evaluating the trustworthiness of Web information does increase if they obtain useful supportive information about that Web information. The mean of the confidence level of their judgments increases by 12.51 percentage points. Additionally, the number of selected ssessing the quality of information on the Web is a challenging issue for at least two reasons. Firstly, there is little control over publishing quality. Secondly, when assessing the trustworthiness of Web pages, users tend to base their judgements upon subjective criteria such as the visual presentation of the website, rather than rigorous criteria such as the author's qualifications or the source's review process. As a result, Web users tend to make incorrect assessments of the trustworthiness of the Web information they are consuming. Also, they are uncertain of their ability to make a decision whether to trust information they are not familiar with. This research addresses this problem by collecting and presenting metadata based on useful practice trustworthiness criteria, in order to support the users' evaluation process for assessing the trustworthiness of Web information during their information seeking processes. In this thesis, we propose the Trustworthiness of Web Information Evaluation (TWINE) application framework, and present a prototype tool that employs this framework for a case study of academic publications. The framework gathers and provides useful information that can support users' judgments of the trustworthiness of Web information. The framework consists of two layers: the presentation layer and the logic layer. The presentation layer is composed of input and output modules, which are the modules that interface with the users. The logic layer consists of the trustworthiness criteria and metadata creation modules. The trustworthiness criteria module is composed of four basic criteria, namely: authority, accuracy, recency and relevance. Each criterion consists of the items, called indicators, in order to indicate the trustworthiness of Web information based on their criteria. The metadata creation module gathers and integrates metadata based on the proposed criteria that will then be used in the output module in order to generate the supportive information for users. The framework was evaluated based on the tool, using an empirical study. The study set a scenario that new postgraduate students search for publications to use in their report using the developed tool. The students were then asked to complete a questionnaire, which was then analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results from the questionnaire show that the confidence level of users when evaluating the trustworthiness of Web information does increase if they obtain useful supportive information about that Web information. The mean of the confidence level of their judgments increases by 12.51 percentage points. Additionally, the number of selected pieces of Web information used in their work does increase when supportive information is provided. The number of pieces of Web information selected by the users increases on average less than one percentage points. Participating users were satisfied with the supportive information, insofar as it helps them to evaluate the trustworthiness of Web information, with the mean satisfaction level of 3.69 of 5 points. Overall the supportive information provided, based on and provided by the framework, can help users to adequately evaluate the trustworthiness of Web information

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ORCID for Wendy Hall: orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-7811

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