Andrew Flanagin | University of California, Santa Barbara (original) (raw)
Papers by Andrew Flanagin
Computers in Human Behavior, 2014
Future Trends in Knowledge Creation and Dissemination
Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change
Information, Communication & Society, 2015
Evaluating Computer-Mediated Communication
The vast amount of information available online makes the origin of information, its quality, and... more The vast amount of information available online makes the origin of information, its quality, and its veracity less clear than ever before, shifting the burden on individual users to assess information credibility. Contemporary youth are a particularly important group to consider with regard to credibility issues because of the tension between their technical and social immersion with digital media, and their relatively limited development and life experience compared to adults (Metzger & Flanagin, 2008). Although children may be highly skilled in their use of digital media, they may be inhibited in terms of their ability to discern quality online information due to their level of cognitive and emotional development, personal experience, or familiarity with the media apparatus compared to adults. This chapter presents the findings of a large-scale survey of children in the U.S. ages 11-18 years examining young people’s beliefs about the credibility of information available online, a...
Journal of Health Communication, 2011
Electronic Commerce Research, 2014
Communication Monographs, 2011
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014
The rich research heritage on source credibility is fundamentally linked to processes of politica... more The rich research heritage on source credibility is fundamentally linked to processes of political communication and the provision of political information. Networked digital technologies, however, have recently complicated the assessment of source credibility by modifying people’s ability to determine source expertise and trustworthiness, which are the foundations upon which credibility evaluations have traditionally rested. This chapter explores source credibility in online contexts by examining the credibility of digital versus traditional channels, the nature of political information conveyed by social media, and the dynamics of political information online. In addition, this chapter considers related research concerns, including the link between credibility and selective exposure, the potential for group polarization, and the role of social media in seeking and delivering credible political information. These concerns suggest challenges and opportunities as information consumer...
The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnec... more The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnected devices has prompted significant changes in the amount, availability, and nature of geographic information. Among the more significant changes is the increasing amount of readily available volunteered geographic information. Although volunteered information has fundamentally enhanced geographic data, it has also prompted concerns with regard to its quality, reliability, and overall value. This essay situates these concerns as issues of information and source credibility by (a) examining the information environment fostering collective information contribution, (b) exploring the environment of information abundance, examining credibility and related notions within this environment, and leveraging extant research findings to understand user-generated geographic information, (c) articulating strategies to discern the credibility of volunteered geographic information (VGI), including rel...
This study examined young people’s trust of Wikipedia as an information resource. A large scale p... more This study examined young people’s trust of Wikipedia as an information resource. A large scale probability based survey with embedded quasi experiments was conducted with 2,747 children in the U.S. ranging from 11 to 18 years old. Results show that young people find Wikipedia to be fairly credible, but also exhibit an awareness of potential problems with non expert, user generated content in anonymous environments. Children tend to evaluate the credibility of online encyclopedia information with this in mind, at times with what appears to be an unwarranted de valuation of this information.
This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts in... more This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts intended to reduce uncertainty between interactants. Uncertainty reduction theory and predicted outcome value theory are used to contextualize individuals’ motivations and behaviors in the risky and uncertain environment of online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. Data from 6477 randomly-selected auctions conducted over eBay.com indicate that more commodity information leads to more, and higher, final bids; higher seller reputation results in fewer bids for less money; and greater system security features result in fewer bids. Additionally, holding item type constant, much more variance in final bid price and bid activity can be explained by these factors as item value increases, although important differences in the direction of relations emerge as well. Based on these findings, current theoretical perspectives on uncertainty reduction are extended to the environment of computer-mediat...
The proliferation of misinformation has been raising increasing societal concerns, with regard to... more The proliferation of misinformation has been raising increasing societal concerns, with regard to the public’s inability to distinguish falsehood, as well as a general degeneration in trust. In complementary to existing small-scaled qualitative and experimental studies on these concerns, this paper proposes an observational approach to model and measure expressed (dis)beliefs in (mis)information by leveraging social media comments as a proxy. We first collect a sample of tweets in response to misinformation and annotate them with (dis)belief labels, then explore the dataset using lexicon-based methods, and finally build classifiers based on the state-of-theart neural transfer-learning models. Under a domain-specific thresholding strategy, the best-performing unbiased classifier archives macro-F1 scores around 0.86 for disbeliefs and 0.80 for beliefs. Applying the classifier, we conduct a large-scaled measurement study and show that, overall, 12%-15% social media comments express dis...
Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibil... more Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibility across four genres of websites; to explore the extent and effects of verifying web-based information; and to measure the relative influence of sponsor familiarity and site attributes on perceived credibility.The results show that perceptions of credibility differed, such that news organization websites were rated highest and personal websites lowest, in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, with e-commerce and special interest sites rated between these, for the most part.The results also indicated that credibility assessments appear to be primarily due to website attributes (e.g. design features, depth of content, site complexity) rather than to familiarity with website sponsors. Finally, there was a negative relationship between self-reported and observed information verification behavior and a positive relationship between self-reported verification and internet/...
Media and Communication
Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their soc... more Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people’s belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people’s dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivations and s...
The perceived credibility of information plays a major role in information selection and influenc... more The perceived credibility of information plays a major role in information selection and influence (Metzger & Flanagin, 2015). Accordingly, past research has examined people's information selection and their decision outcomes, in both web and social media environments (e.g., Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015; Winter & Krämer, 2012). Yet, in spite of this research, the specific processes of people's information selection and credibility assessment are not fully understood. To better specify credibility evaluation behaviors, we employed eye-tracking methods as a means to determine precisely which web page cues (i.e., author, introduction, short advance summary, social media information, pro & con arguments, peer comments, poll on the topic) people attend to as they form opinions about web site credibility. Additionally, we induced participants' information search motivations (i.e., accuracy, defense, impression motivation, or a control). 87 participants in our study viewed a web p...
Media and Communication, 2021
Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their soc... more Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people's belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people's dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivatio...
New Media & Society
In spite of the capacity for the Internet to connect people and information irrespective of geogr... more In spite of the capacity for the Internet to connect people and information irrespective of geography, physical location may paradoxically provide influential indicators of the perceived expertise of strangers and the credibility of the information they provide that may in turn guide people’s behaviors. To address this, this study examined the novel concept of geospatial concordance or the degree to which entities implicated in the sharing of aggregated opinions in online information pools are physically close to each other in geographic space. Predictions were tested in the context of user-generated online reviews using stimuli reflecting various types of geospatial concordance: between information consumers and online reviewers, between reviewed venues and their reviewers, and between consumers and reviewed venues. Findings support geographic perspectives emphasizing space as a mental construction imbued with particular meaning and confirm psychological views that people mentally ...
Human Communication Research
Computers in Human Behavior, 2014
Future Trends in Knowledge Creation and Dissemination
Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change
Information, Communication & Society, 2015
Evaluating Computer-Mediated Communication
The vast amount of information available online makes the origin of information, its quality, and... more The vast amount of information available online makes the origin of information, its quality, and its veracity less clear than ever before, shifting the burden on individual users to assess information credibility. Contemporary youth are a particularly important group to consider with regard to credibility issues because of the tension between their technical and social immersion with digital media, and their relatively limited development and life experience compared to adults (Metzger & Flanagin, 2008). Although children may be highly skilled in their use of digital media, they may be inhibited in terms of their ability to discern quality online information due to their level of cognitive and emotional development, personal experience, or familiarity with the media apparatus compared to adults. This chapter presents the findings of a large-scale survey of children in the U.S. ages 11-18 years examining young people’s beliefs about the credibility of information available online, a...
Journal of Health Communication, 2011
Electronic Commerce Research, 2014
Communication Monographs, 2011
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014
The rich research heritage on source credibility is fundamentally linked to processes of politica... more The rich research heritage on source credibility is fundamentally linked to processes of political communication and the provision of political information. Networked digital technologies, however, have recently complicated the assessment of source credibility by modifying people’s ability to determine source expertise and trustworthiness, which are the foundations upon which credibility evaluations have traditionally rested. This chapter explores source credibility in online contexts by examining the credibility of digital versus traditional channels, the nature of political information conveyed by social media, and the dynamics of political information online. In addition, this chapter considers related research concerns, including the link between credibility and selective exposure, the potential for group polarization, and the role of social media in seeking and delivering credible political information. These concerns suggest challenges and opportunities as information consumer...
The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnec... more The proliferation of information sources as a result of networked computers and other interconnected devices has prompted significant changes in the amount, availability, and nature of geographic information. Among the more significant changes is the increasing amount of readily available volunteered geographic information. Although volunteered information has fundamentally enhanced geographic data, it has also prompted concerns with regard to its quality, reliability, and overall value. This essay situates these concerns as issues of information and source credibility by (a) examining the information environment fostering collective information contribution, (b) exploring the environment of information abundance, examining credibility and related notions within this environment, and leveraging extant research findings to understand user-generated geographic information, (c) articulating strategies to discern the credibility of volunteered geographic information (VGI), including rel...
This study examined young people’s trust of Wikipedia as an information resource. A large scale p... more This study examined young people’s trust of Wikipedia as an information resource. A large scale probability based survey with embedded quasi experiments was conducted with 2,747 children in the U.S. ranging from 11 to 18 years old. Results show that young people find Wikipedia to be fairly credible, but also exhibit an awareness of potential problems with non expert, user generated content in anonymous environments. Children tend to evaluate the credibility of online encyclopedia information with this in mind, at times with what appears to be an unwarranted de valuation of this information.
This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts in... more This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts intended to reduce uncertainty between interactants. Uncertainty reduction theory and predicted outcome value theory are used to contextualize individuals’ motivations and behaviors in the risky and uncertain environment of online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. Data from 6477 randomly-selected auctions conducted over eBay.com indicate that more commodity information leads to more, and higher, final bids; higher seller reputation results in fewer bids for less money; and greater system security features result in fewer bids. Additionally, holding item type constant, much more variance in final bid price and bid activity can be explained by these factors as item value increases, although important differences in the direction of relations emerge as well. Based on these findings, current theoretical perspectives on uncertainty reduction are extended to the environment of computer-mediat...
The proliferation of misinformation has been raising increasing societal concerns, with regard to... more The proliferation of misinformation has been raising increasing societal concerns, with regard to the public’s inability to distinguish falsehood, as well as a general degeneration in trust. In complementary to existing small-scaled qualitative and experimental studies on these concerns, this paper proposes an observational approach to model and measure expressed (dis)beliefs in (mis)information by leveraging social media comments as a proxy. We first collect a sample of tweets in response to misinformation and annotate them with (dis)belief labels, then explore the dataset using lexicon-based methods, and finally build classifiers based on the state-of-theart neural transfer-learning models. Under a domain-specific thresholding strategy, the best-performing unbiased classifier archives macro-F1 scores around 0.86 for disbeliefs and 0.80 for beliefs. Applying the classifier, we conduct a large-scaled measurement study and show that, overall, 12%-15% social media comments express dis...
Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibil... more Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibility across four genres of websites; to explore the extent and effects of verifying web-based information; and to measure the relative influence of sponsor familiarity and site attributes on perceived credibility.The results show that perceptions of credibility differed, such that news organization websites were rated highest and personal websites lowest, in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, with e-commerce and special interest sites rated between these, for the most part.The results also indicated that credibility assessments appear to be primarily due to website attributes (e.g. design features, depth of content, site complexity) rather than to familiarity with website sponsors. Finally, there was a negative relationship between self-reported and observed information verification behavior and a positive relationship between self-reported verification and internet/...
Media and Communication
Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their soc... more Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people’s belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people’s dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivations and s...
The perceived credibility of information plays a major role in information selection and influenc... more The perceived credibility of information plays a major role in information selection and influence (Metzger & Flanagin, 2015). Accordingly, past research has examined people's information selection and their decision outcomes, in both web and social media environments (e.g., Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015; Winter & Krämer, 2012). Yet, in spite of this research, the specific processes of people's information selection and credibility assessment are not fully understood. To better specify credibility evaluation behaviors, we employed eye-tracking methods as a means to determine precisely which web page cues (i.e., author, introduction, short advance summary, social media information, pro & con arguments, peer comments, poll on the topic) people attend to as they form opinions about web site credibility. Additionally, we induced participants' information search motivations (i.e., accuracy, defense, impression motivation, or a control). 87 participants in our study viewed a web p...
Media and Communication, 2021
Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their soc... more Research typically presumes that people believe misinformation and propagate it through their social networks. Yet, a wide range of motivations for sharing misinformation might impact its spread, as well as people's belief of it. By examining research on motivations for sharing news information generally, and misinformation specifically, we derive a range of motivations that broaden current understandings of the sharing of misinformation to include factors that may to some extent mitigate the presumed dangers of misinformation for society. To illustrate the utility of our viewpoint we report data from a preliminary study of people's dis/belief reactions to misinformation shared on social media using natural language processing. Analyses of over 2,5 million comments demonstrate that misinformation on social media is often disbelieved. These insights are leveraged to propose directions for future research that incorporate a more inclusive understanding of the various motivatio...
New Media & Society
In spite of the capacity for the Internet to connect people and information irrespective of geogr... more In spite of the capacity for the Internet to connect people and information irrespective of geography, physical location may paradoxically provide influential indicators of the perceived expertise of strangers and the credibility of the information they provide that may in turn guide people’s behaviors. To address this, this study examined the novel concept of geospatial concordance or the degree to which entities implicated in the sharing of aggregated opinions in online information pools are physically close to each other in geographic space. Predictions were tested in the context of user-generated online reviews using stimuli reflecting various types of geospatial concordance: between information consumers and online reviewers, between reviewed venues and their reviewers, and between consumers and reviewed venues. Findings support geographic perspectives emphasizing space as a mental construction imbued with particular meaning and confirm psychological views that people mentally ...
Human Communication Research