Open Collections

Ren, Congjing

University of British Columbia

Since ancient times, misinformation exists in people’s lives, becoming a serious social and technical challenge confronting our society. As the portals to massive amounts of information, search engines are responsible for providing users with accurate information and guidance. Focusing on COVID-19 information, the purpose of this qualitative study is to understand how young adults respond to different misinformation intervention techniques on search engines. The study was carried out through a user study with four steps: a brief self-completed questionnaire, two observed online search sessions, and a semi-structured interview. The searches were conducted using an artificial search engine prototype and participants experienced one condition in which misinformation was present, but not flagged, and another in which it was flagged using one of two approaches. During the interview, the participants were asked to share their experience of the two searches, their views on search engines, misinformation presented by search engines, and different misinformation intervention techniques. Results showed that most participants lacked awareness of misinformation encountered in their searches, even though they were generally competent searchers. Users showed a high degree of trust in the information presented by search engines, especially Google, but they relied on the sources of information as the primary basis to judge the credibility of results. The misinformation intervention techniques tested did help users to identify misinformation, but also prompted some negative feedback, suggesting that a nuanced and balanced approach is needed to address this issue. These results may inform the future design of the search engine results page. Users’ perceptions of these intervention techniques may also be relevant to the design of other information interaction platforms.

Text

2021-08-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79494

Library, Archival and Information Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/