Judging the quality and credibility of information in Internet discussion forums

This explorative study contributes to research on relevance assessment by specifying criteria that are used in the judgment of information quality and credibility in internet discussion forums. To this end, 4739 messages posted to 160 Finnish discussion threads were analyzed. Of the messages, 20.5% contained explicit judgments of the quality of information and credibility in other messages. In the judgments, the forum participants employed both positive criteria such as validity of information, and negative criteria such as dishonesty in argumentation. In the evaluation of the quality of the message ́s information content, the most frequently used criteria pertained to the usefulness, correctness and specificity of information. In the judgment of information credibility, the main criteria included the reputation, expertise, and honesty of the author of the message. Since the internet discussion forums tend to emphasize the role of disputational discourse questioning rather than accepting the views presented by others, mainly negative criteria were used in the judgments. Due to particular features of the disputational environment focusing on sensitive topics, the findings cannot be generalized into all discussion forums judging the quality and credibility of information.