Is Truth Contextual? The Browsing Purpose, the Availability of Comparable Material, and the Web Content Credibility Evaluation

This paper discusses to what extent the browsing context needs to be taken into account when considering web credibility ratings. We focus on the availability of other websites on the same topic and the browsing purpose as two factors that can potentially influence how people perceive credibility and how accurate their judgments are when contrasted with expert evaluations. We analyze data from an experimental study in which subjects were asked to rate a set of websites on various dimensions in different contexts. We conclude that more context influences how often extreme evaluations are used, which ratings correlate with the declared knowledge of the topic, and which websites features are brought up as important for formulating the final judgment.