EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

User Generated Content and Challenges for Quality

Kirsti Ala-Mutka European Commission, JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Information Society Unit

EFQUEL Forum workshop:

Quality of Peer production

The views expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of the EC

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Institute for Prospective Technological Studies

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon IPTS: Part of DG JRC of the EC: 7 Research Institutes across Europe Mission: “to provide customer driven support to the EU policy making process by researching science-based responses to policy challenges that have both a socio-economic as well as a scientific or technological dimension”

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Outline

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon • • • •

Take up of social media Cases and their quality considerations

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Blogging

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YouTube

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Wikipedia User motivations Challenges

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EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

Take up of social media

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Blogs: Sharing and discussing opinions

• • • • EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

In May 2008, more than 110 million blogs tracked by Technorati 175.000 blogs and 1,6 million posts created daily 40% of internet users read blogs (OCLC 2007) 17% of internet users contribute (OCLC 2007)

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Quality issues: No content assurance system Even 75% of Blogspot blogs have been approximated to be spam 56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify the facts, 57% include links to original sources (Pew/Internet 2006) 34% of internet users have decided, based on a blog, not to buy a certain product (IPSOS Mori) – trust exists 21.4% of US companies had investigated the exposure of sensitive information via blog or message board postings; 19.2% of the companies disciplined and 9.1% terminated the contracts of employees for these reasons (Proofpoint)

Source: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in our Networked world, OCLC study2007.

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YouTube: Sharing videos

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon • • • • • •

2,4 billion videos viewed in July 2007 65000 video uploads daily (Oct 2006) 3 rd most visited site worldwide (Alexa) 200-250 mission unique visitors each month (comScore, Nielsen Netratings) Only 0,18% of visits are uploads (Hitwise 2007) From the 100 most viewed videos in September 2007, 63% of the videos were professional, 37% amateur videos

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Quality issues: Content quality assurance methodology:

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User declares agreement with material restrictions when uploading materials

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Automatic filtering for digital fingerprints of major media companies

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Rights holder can ask for removal of material Continous stream of lawsuits for infringing copyrights, e.g. Viacom Cases of cyberbullying, inadequate adult material etc.

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Wikipedia: Collaborative content

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

Available in 250 languages with a total of 10 million articles 8 th most visited site worldwide, 20 million page visits per day 7,2 Million registered users in English Wikipedia 75000 active contributors (4,8% of visits were content edits in 2007)

2,4 million ENGL articles • • • • • •

Quality issues: Content quality assurance methology:

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Content rules of neutrality, verifiability, notability and “no original research” Anyone can edit and correct

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peer-reviewed “featured articles” system Compares to be as “reliable” as E. Britannica, but still even 13% of articles contain errors Vandalism occurs but is corrected quickly Cases of companies editing their entries 55% of survey respondents in US in 2007 considered it “extremely credible” in information about companies (Edelman) Has announced efforts to increase article credibility and quality by reducing access to immediate editing Jan 2001 Jan 2008 Source: Wikipedia 7

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

User motivations

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Motivations for content production are often internal • blogging: creative expression (77%), sharing personal experiences (76%), sharing practical knowledge (64%) (Pew/Internet 2006) • online video sharing: fame (65%), fun (59%) sharing experiences with friends (41%), let others benefit from the videos (29%) (McKinsey 2007)

Challenges

EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon • • • • • Ease of creating and publishing digital content, possibly without critical assessment but with plenty of visibility – privacy issues, cyberbullying Also readers/users may lack necessary critical skills – copyrights, verifying information sources Different quality assurance methologies in different initiatives – more collaborative content production leads to more collaborative and effective quality assurance (blogging vs. Wikipedia) Adding restrictions for content contributions may discourage participation, e.g. Nupodia vs. Wikipedia As organizations see more threats than benefits, they are responding by banning e.g. YouTube, Wikipedia, social networking etc.

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There is a need for a digital culture of responsibility and critical assessment in both content creation and usage Need to find functional models of open content production in large (and small!) scale collaboration

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EFQUEL 2008 Forum, 16-17 June 2008, Lisbon

Thank you for your attention

[email protected]

http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

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