The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced on August 14, 2007 a public competition that will award $2 million in funding to emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning.  The competition is administered by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) and is part of MacArthur’s $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative that aims to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Awards will be given in two categories: Innovation Awards (from $100,000 to $250,000) and Knowledge Networking Awards (from $30,000 to $75,000). You can access the competition site, or read the full press release on the MacArthur site and on the Chronicle of Higher Education.

On August 7, 2007, Google announced an experimental feature on Google News which will display comments from people and organizations who are actual participants in the news stories discussed.  Google’s aim is to “help enhance the news experience for readers” by providing both professionally written articles and personal views. However, critics question the practicalities and implications of such a project on problems such as verifying a source’s identity or screening for inaccurate statements. You can read more on this New York Times aritlce and on Google News blog.

Taiwanese academics debate the credibility of information on Wikipedia. Some critique its utility for education while others appraise the value of a “wiki” model. Associate professor S. T. Huang of the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology says they have been using the wiki model to accumulate and preserve “disappearing local knowledge”. Researchers at Academic Sinica have also been inspired by the wiki model, and are in the process of compiling the Taiwanese edition of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL, 生命大百科), in which they aim “to include information on at least 80 percent of species that can only be found in Taiwan.” You can read more about this in the Taipei Times.

An article in the InformationWeek, August 15, 2007, presents perspectives and reports from educators and researchers about the role of Hollywood in scientific and technological literacy. Mentioned in the article are a paper by UCF professor Costas J. Efthimiou and former UCF physics chair R. A. Llewellyn titled “Hollywood Blockbusters: Unlimited Fun But Limited Science Literacy”, and a 2006 report by the Association of Computing Machinery on Globalization and Offshoring of Software. You can read the InformationWeek article here.

The AOL Developer Network provided a status update (August 14, 2007) about the third party OpenIDs AOL supports. 10 third party providers are supported, and AOL is accepting requests to include more. Though OpenIDs are not a new thing, its recent mentioning in the claimID blog and AOL Developer Network has generated new discussions worth mentioning in the context of ‘credibility’. What new developments can OpenID lead to in terms of facilitating people’s assessment of information? To learn more about OpenID check out this article by Fred Stuztman.

The brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith — offers users a searchable database [called WikiScanner] that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses. [Copied from article in Wired, Aug. 14, 2007.] Wired suggests you try out the software and submit your vote on wikipedia submissions.

Since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks. [Copied from this article in The New York Times.]

The Untiversity of California, Santa Cruz’ Wiki Lab show their Wikipedia trust coloring demo. The text in a Wikipedia page is colored according to its contributor’s reputation (See what each color means). The reputation of Wikipedia authors is computed according to how long an author’s contribution lasts in the Wikipedia. “Specifically, authors whose contributions are preserved, or built-upon, gain reputation; authors whose contributions are undone lose reputation.” Details of the algorithm are presented in their paper A Content-Driven Repuration System for the Wikipedia. [The UCSC Wiki Lab was first mentioned in this article from The Jerusalem Post.]

Over 50-year-old ’silver surfers’ are increasing in numbers on internet use, including using social media and social networks, such as Eons–and are creating a market opportunity not yet widely tapped. According to a Communications Market Report from the UK’s Ofcom (Office of Communications, an independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communication industires), in the UK, “nearly 30% of total time spent on the interenet is accounted for by over-50s”. While I have found no information about usage statistics on social news media, it is likely that assessing the credibility on social news media sites is an issue spanning different generations. [Content in this post first appeared in this Wired Blog Network post.]

According to a Reuters report in InformationWeek (August 21, 2007), Ask.com will capitalize on the aggregate behavior of different type of users to improve search results. While major search systems all analyze the collective online surfing behavior of users, Ask’s “affinity-group” approach to collective search will apparently include more specific user characteristics. In the context of credibility research, what difference does Ask’s type of collective search results have for people’s assessment of information credibility? Read more about this report here.