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This panel addresses information credibility issues in the context of social media. During this panel, participants will discuss people's credibility perceptions of online content in social media f ...

With the evolution of the Web and development of web-based search engines, online searching has become a common method for obtaining information. Given this popularity, the question arises as to how much time people save by using search engines for their information needs compared to offline sources, as well as how online searching affects both search experiences and search outcomes. Using a random sample of queries from a major search engine and a sample of reference questions from the Internet Public Library (IPL), we conduct a real-effort experiment to compare online and offline search experiences and outcomes. We find that participants are significantly more likely to find an answer on the Web (100 %), compared to offline searching (between 87 % and 90 %). Restricting our analysis to the set of questions in which participants find answers in both treatments, a Web search takes on average 7 (9) minutes, whereas the corresponding offline search takes 22 (19) minutes for a search-engine (IPL) question. Furthermore, while raters judge library sources to be significantly more trustworthy and authoritative than the corresponding Web sources, they judge Web sources as significantly more relevant. Balancing all factors, we find that the overall source quality is not significantly different between the two treatments for the set of search-engine questions. However, for IPL questions, we find that non-Web sources are judged to have significantly higher overall quality than the corresponding Web sources. In comparison, for factual questions, Web search results are significantly more likely to be correct (66 % vs. 43 %). Lastly, post-search questionnaires reveal that participants find online searching more enjoyable than offline searching.

Social network site (SNS) platforms have the potential to be effective information-seeking channels due to their technical and social affordances, such as the ability to broadcast content to a large group and to aggregate one's contacts. This study tests the impact of a Facebook app that allows users to visualize their network of Facebook Friends to see how it influences who adolescents identify as good sources of information about college. Comparing Friends selected by 24 high school seniors before and after viewing Facebook network visualizations reveals that first-generation students were more likely to select higher quality information sources among their Facebook Friends after exposure to the visualization. Our results suggest that social media can help users identify good human information sources by making hidden resources in one's network more visible.

Individuals may encounter distinct kinds of challenges in assessing credibility in a social Q&A setting where they interact with strangers. It is necessary to better understand how people make credibility judgments when seeking information using social Q&A services because people increasingly use such services to obtain personalized answers from a large pool of unknown people. In this paper, we report preliminary findings from a quasi-field study where participants were asked to use Yahoo! Answers for one week and were interviewed afterwards. We find that participants’ assessment of the credibility of strangers who answered their questions occurred in three different dimensions: attitude, trustworthiness, and expertise. Furthermore, different elements were noticed and interpreted in each dimension of the credibility assessment. Our work provides insights into source credibility assessment in social Q&A settings and implications for the design of social technologies that better support people’s online credibility assessment.

Reactive-magnetron-sputtered ZrO2 thin film has been deposited on Si directly for gate dielectric application. Both structural and electrical properties of the ZrO2 film have been investigated. An amorphous structure for 30Å ZrO2 and a semi-amorphous structure for 200Å ZrO2 have been revealed. The sputtered film shows a good stoichiometry and a good structural stability of ZrO2 based on the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy data. Thin equivalent oxide thickness of about 11.5Å was obtained without the consideration of quantum mechanical effects. A low leakage of less than 10−2 A/cm2 at ±1V relative to the flat band voltage was obtained for this 11.5Å equivalent oxide thickness Pt/ZrO2/Si structure. High effective dielectric breakdown and superior reliability properties have been demonstrated for ZrO2 gate dielectric.