Our work on credibility began with a study that was not about credibility. In the mid-1990s we conducted research about how people were using the Internet and the Web, which had only recently achieved mass popularity at the time. By then, however, it was becoming clear that the Internet was emerging as a versatile tool for information sharing, commerce, and communication, among other things, so we embarked on a study exploring the various functions for which people were using this "new" medium. Our key findings were (a) people were not only using the Internet, but they were doing so to satisfy a multitude of information and communication needs even at this early point in the medium's development, and (b) people were relying on this relatively new tool to get information even more heavily than "traditional" information resources including, for example, newspapers, television, books, and magazines.

We were somewhat surprised by this last result, given that much of the information on the Web at the time (and still today) was not subject to the same types of credibility standards as most traditional mainstream media. To assess the impact of this, our next study explored questions of credibility in the online environment specifically, comparing people's credibility perceptions of web-based information to information found in newspapers, radio, magazines, and television across various types of information including news, entertainment, commercial, and reference (i.e., factual, non-news) information (Flanagin & Metzger, 2000). Again, we were somewhat surprised by results showing that the Internet was perceived to be only slightly less credible than newspapers, and more than or just as credible as all other media. Further, and in light of the many challenges to credibility posed by the Internet environment, we were somewhat dismayed to find that few people said they verified the information they found online in any way. In sum, we found that although people believed what they found online, they did little to check the veracity of the information they were getting via the Internet.

At this point, of course, we wanted to explain why people would place so much stock in an information resource that was widely held to suffer from credibility problems, without exercising the appropriate skepticism or caution. As a starting point we reviewed the lengthy history of credibility research, dating back to early concerns regarding source credibility, in an effort to understand the basic elements of credibility, and how it might (or might not) translate to the Internet environment (Metzger, Flanagin, Eyal, Lemus, & McCann, 2003). With this as a foundation, we then undertook a series of experimental studies (Flanagin & Metzger, 2003; Flanagin & Meztger, 2007; Metzger, Flanagin, & Zwarun, 2003), which showed several things: (a) perceptions of credibility differ across web site "genres": news organization web sites are rated highest in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, and personal web sites lowest; for the most part, ecommerce and special interest sites were rated in the middle; (b) credibility assessments appear to be due more to Web site attributes (e.g., design features, depth of content, and site complexity), than to familiarity with Web site "sponsors" such as organizations or individuals; (c) although people generally report verifying the web-based information they retrieve (especially among more experienced Internet users), actual observations of their online behaviors suggest that this is not the case; (d) men have been shown to rate both message credibility and site credibility significantly higher than women do; (e) women have been shown to rate the credibility of messages and web sites produced by women significantly lower than men do; (f) college students rely very heavily on the Web for both general and academic information, they expect this usage to increase over time, and they find information to be more credible than do people from a more general adult population; and (g) nonetheless, college students verify the information they find online significantly less than adults. Overall, these findings suggest the complexity of credibility and digital media.

Parallel to this work, several interesting developments have occurred that have had an impact on our research. First, as part of their efforts to economize, organizations are migrating more and more critical information to the web, or making such information accessible exclusively via digital means. Digital media have thus enhanced both capabilities and expectations for people to be more self-serving and self-informing. Individuals are now encouraged or expected to do everything from choose between medical treatment options, decide on retirement benefits and investment options, book airline reservations, and select and register for college courses entirely on their own, utilizing information provided via digital media rather than interacting with live agents, experts, or customer service representatives. Second, traditional notions of credibility as coming from a centralized authority (e.g., a teacher, expert, or author) and individualized appraisal processes are challenged by digital technologies. Electronic networks make it easier to rely on the collective to assess information. Credibility assessments as constructed through collective or community efforts (e.g., wikis, text messaging via cell phones, or social networking applications) emerge as a major theme in recent discussions, and phrases like "distributed" and "decentralized" credibility, the "democratization of information," and "collectively versus institutionally-derived credibility" are common. At core is the belief that digital media allow for the uncoupling of credibility and authority in a way never before possible. Third, a hallmark of the digital media environment is the ability of individuals to connect to one another more easily due to reductions in the costs of communication and information sharing. Thus, group and social engagement increasingly are crucial to credibility construction and assessment, and are likely to become even more important as people begin to appreciate the full potential of networked environments.

Digital media thus call into question our conceptions of authority as centralized, impenetrable, and singularly accurate and move information consumers from a model of single authority based on hierarchy to a model of multiple authorities based on networks of peers. Overall, while it is true that these characteristics and realities of digital media may not have changed the basic skills needed for credibility assessment, they certainly have changed the need to assess credibility, the frequency with which to do so, and the strategies that may be useful and available to assess information and its source.

The MacArthur Foundation has also become interested in these issues, and recently began sponsoring selected projects to investigate credibility and digital media. Among their overarching goals is to identify strategies to help information consumers locate credible information in this new information environment. In 2005 we took part in a symposium on this issue, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and conducted jointly by the University of Washington's Information School and the American Library Association's Office of Information Technology and Policy. More recently, we edited a seminal volume exploring issues of youth, credibility, and digital media (Metzger & Flanagin, 2008), as part of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning Initiative.

In 2007 we were awarded a grant by the MacArthur Foundation to continue and extend our research on credibility. In this research project, we are exploring people's understandings of credibility across the wide range of digital information resources available today, including new and emerging forms; examining how and under what circumstances people are likely to carefully scrutinize the information they find; and considering how socioeconomic and demographic characteristics affect usage behaviors and credibility assessments. Details about this research can be found under the Current Projects part of this website.

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