Informed by this need, Prof. Dr. Hendrik Heuer from the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) and Elena L. Glassman from Harvard University have examined how citizens can effectively assess the credibility of news websites. In an in-depth study with 20 journalists and 23 users, they identified eleven criteria that help users distinguish reliable from unreliable news sites. The following six criteria are particularly important, as they are less susceptible to manipulation.
Citizens can ask themselves the following questions when in doubt:
- Content: Does a website spread content that is known to be problematic, such as far-right conspiracy theories? Does a website only present one side of an issue?
- Political Positioning: Does a website only highlight certain political actors or ideas? Who shares the website’s content on social media? This is outside the control of a website and is difficult to falsify.
- Authors: Who are the authors of a news website? Can you verify if the authors exist and are qualified for journalistic work using a search engine? Does the content and the opinions on a website align with prior work of an author?
- Professional Standards: Does a website clearly distinguish between opinions and facts? Are different sides of a story presented? Users can check this by refering to a topic they are already familiar with.
- Source Citations: Does a website provide sources? Are sources accurately represented? This can be easily checked using statistics.
- Reputation: How do third parties, such as reputable newspapers, evaluate a source? Third-party assessments are hard to manipulate and therefore particularly helpful.
Prof. Heuer is currently researching how these robust criteria can be utilized. A technical solution being explored is a browser plugin that helps in deciding whether a website is trustworthy. This work is part of the new CAIS research program “Design of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.” The research program aims to develop principles for the use of trustworthy AI and test them in practical applications—a step towards combating disinformation through innovative technologies.
More information about the research program can be found here.
Further information, including how the browser plugins are used, can be found in the podcast episode “Facts or fakes: How do I recognize trustworthy content on news sites?”.
About the study: Heuer, H., & Glassman, E. L. (2024). Reliability Criteria for News Websites. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 31(2), 1–33. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635147
About CAIS
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia has been funding the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum as a central institute for digitalization research on a long-term basis since April 2021. By proposing evidence-based solutions, CAIS contributes to shaping digital change in the interests of people. CAIS was founded as a research college at the beginning of 2017 and has been awarding fellowships to national and international guest researchers in the field of digitalization research ever since. CAIS conducts research in the research programs “Digital Democratic Innovations” and “Educational Technologies and Artificial Intelligence”. In April 2024, the third research program “Design of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” began its work. The research programs interlink the disciplines from social sciences and humanities to computer science and test research results in practice. Further information on CAIS can be found at: www.cais-research.de