Assessing the Quality of Online Information from the User's Perspective

The purpose of this multifaceted project is to examine the quality of information found in Wikipedia, as perceived by readers and content contributors.

Wikipedia is a Web-based multilingual user-generated knowledge base that features information spanning from scholarly content to celebrity news, and is available in more than 300 language editions. We explored several attributes of the information provided in English Wikipedia articles to identify newly emerging dimensions of online information quality.

Using a mixed-method approach of content analysis and exploratory factor analysis, the results of the study demonstrate the emergence of novel attributes for online information quality which are applicable for social media.

This is one of the few studies to employ a mixed-method approach that offers diverse—but reliable—perspectives on information quality as perceived by everyday users of Wikipedia.

Boryung Ju is a professor in the School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University. She holds a PhD from the iSchool at the Florida State University and an MLIS from Indiana University, Bloomington. She teaches research methodologies and a range of courses in information technology-related areas, such as human-computer interaction and information architecture. Her research areas include knowledge sharing, technology and communication models in distributed virtual environments, and information interaction.

Her research has been published in journals—including JASIS&T, Information Processing & Management, Library & Information Science Research, Journal of Documentation, and Journal of Information Science—and presented at international conferences throughout Asia, Europe and the US.