John Bullock, a postdoctoral fellow at University of British Columbia, conducted a study that looks at the impact of false information on people’s political views. Two groups of people were detailed with the policy positions of a fictional Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. One group received pretty middle-ground positions, while the second group received radical positions, such as abolishing the Department of Education. After the second group was told that the information provided to them was false, they were more likely to support the candidate than before they knew the information was false, but still, less likely to support the candidate than the first group. If candidates used this research finding to their advantage, we would have but a flood of distorted information, which would just be hurtful to all involved. Hopefully, what a psychology professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, Nicholas DiFonzo, says holds true as well. Based on studies of rumor, DiFonzo believes that when people realize that the reputations they have are at stake when spreading false information, they may act more reliably. The full article mentioning these studies can be found at The Vancouver Sun here.

CanadaOne, a business information source, reports a study conducted by Leger Marketing about Canadians and their media preferences. Based on approximately 1500 adults, the study finds that the top five most credible information sources are: radio, television, newspapers and business magazines. There are gender and age differences. Women are more likely to trust national life style magazines than men (34% to 25%). In addition, 20 percent of 18 to 24 year olds believe a blog is a trustworthy source of information compared to 12 percent of 25 to 34 yearl olds. You can find the original article here, and the original marketing study by Leger Marketing here.

Space is still available for the iConference wildcard session “Information Credibility: Let’s Get Serious”.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to discuss research ideas and directions with key researchers in information credibility, including Miriam Metzger, Soo Young Rieh, David Lankes and Michael Eisenberg.

Register today by sending an email to credible@u.washington.edu so that relevant articles can be made available to you.

The session takes place at the iConference (UCLA) on Friday, February 29 (1:30pm to 3:00pm). More information is available at http://credibilitycommons.org/index.php/iconference2008_cfp_wildcard/

The Credibility Commons Project invites you to pariticipate in a 90-min. long wildcard session at the 2008 iConference at UCLA (Feb. 28 - Mar. 1, 2008), titled “Information Credibility: Let’s Get Serious”. The sessions goals are to: 1)    Discuss the new concerns and challenges of information credibility raised by new developments in search technology, online participatory publishing models, and social networking tools for both consumers and producers of information. 2)    Envision potential research, design and development directions to address these new challenges.  

Senior researchers on information credibility will briefly present their research and engage in discussions with participants to meet the sessions goals. Space is limited. Register by January 31!

Registration is very simple, and should take only 5 minutes. For more information, check out our call for participation page here.