Discerning the Verifiability of Electronic Resources and Services
Keynote address delivered by Mr. W. J. Jeyaraj, Acting Librarian, Eastern University, Sri Lanka, at the International Seminar on “Optimal Use of Electronic Resources and Services”, conducted by the Department of Library Information Science, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India. 17–19 June 2019.
From the past to the present, modes of communication have been constantly evolving to be more explanatory and efficient. With the idea of provisioning efficient communication between different ends, the source, and the receiver, the concept of efficiency has been refined and re-defined over the years. As such we are currently existing in an era where every user on the planet is not merely a receiver of information but also a potential information generator as well. Hence, it has become a vital duty of every single human being to adopt efficient information generation, transmission, and utilization skills in order to maintain the quality of the information being transmitted. As such, this article explores the horizon of what constitutes trustworthy electronic resources, how can one identify and access such trustworthy electronic resources, how can a user be a verifiable source of electronic information and the use cases as well as the optimal usage of electronic resources an services.
1 Introduction
Information dispersion is a process of spreading the news to readers or users to whom it may be valuable. There have been several modes through which information has been dispersed throughout the past up to the present ages. In the past, human messengers had to walk miles, carrying some information intended to be delivered to another human receiver. This same period of time used animals (specifically, birds) as message carriers as well. Moving forth from that time, the human race had been through several transitioning periods where information can be transmitted from the source to the receiver.
With the invention of the telegraph, around the 1830s, long-distance communication was made possible, revolutionizing the idea of information dissemination itself. Samuel Morse used morse code which was transmitted in the form of electrical signals traveling over a tunneling wire that connected different stations. Following the telegraph, there was an upsurge of research and discovery with regard to long-distance communication and the overall modes of communication. One discovery led to another and mankind was introduced to the internet, the present and ultimate pinnacle of how communication occurs between polar ends of the earth.
Currently, it is hard to envision electronic resources or digitized information without envisioning the internet as the main platform. However, we will be extending our ideologies a little bit further than the mere search browsers and social media sites that are commonly framed as the first impression of the internet. We will also be discussing what exactly is meant by having access to trustworthy or verifiable information as opposed to having access to unlimited information. Proceeding that, we will look further into how to train ourselves to identify the verifiability of electronic resources than blindly believing every piece of information accessible to one, as a user. Concluding this write-up, I’ll be providing insight into how users could obtain the optimal benefits from such electronic resources and their services.
2 Elucidating the scope of Electronic Information and Services
Under this section, we will look upon the scope, by which I mean, the ways in which information and services can be classified into, in order to define the characteristics of trustworthy or verifiable information.
2.1 Verifiability of electronic information
The main classes of information classification that we picture can be mentioned as tangible information and intangible information. Tangible information comprises the most conventional mediums of information coverage such as print-based medium that a reader could touch, feel and read. Intangible information drives the most widely used class of information resources such as those that could not be physically touched, with the most common examples such as the news on the television, radio or the internet. Now, if we reorganize these two classes of information, we can align the intangible information with electronic information resources.
Circling back to the section’s title, how can we actually verify information? With the tangible information resources such as print-based news and newspapers, the news item undergoes several intermediate checkpoints such as writers, editors, etc., and processes such as news collection, compilation, editing, proofreading, etc., before it reaches its readers. All these processes verify different aspects of that news item, thus giving a certain level of assurance to its readers.
However, this is not the case for, not all, but most of the intangible resources. Excluding most of the news on the television or radio, which undergo a similar checkpointing pathway to the publication of news items, the internet has paved way for questions and doubts regarding the verifiability of electronic resources. This is due to the fact that individual users are given the freedom to report or spread the news to anyone and everyone, without having a limitation that borders other information platforms such as newspapers, television, and radio. Therefore, we, as readers, need to practice awareness in being able to differentiate true information from fake rumors. The following graph represents the value of true and false information against the time axis.
As shown by the above graph, a true piece of information starts with a very high value for its information content. (The value of information is measured in relation to the influence or impact that that information has on the reader community). This value gradually decreases over time and that information begins to lose the relative impact that it established when compared to its initial point. With false information, the information bears a near to 0 value for the truth factor of the information. However, as this false information is disseminated, it is bound to reach a considerable amount of readers who accept the contents of that information as true information and increase the value of that information. Nevertheless, this value will never be enough to transform a false fact into a true fact. However, it deceptively boosts a false fact as a true fact. It may sound slightly complicated and hence needs to be carefully understood.
2.2 Verifiability of electronic services
Electronic services are a more vast and crucial area that dictates the necessity of “verifiability”. Similar to having verifiable information resources, the deliverance of verifiable services is a prime factor when it comes to measuring the quality of those services. But first, let us oversee the types of electronic services that fall under this category.
Nowadays, every department rendering customer or administrative services has incorporated or harnessed IT capabilities to deliver fast, prompt and accurate services. Among the many departments, administration, finance, procurement, distribution, and technical services are a few. If the quality of the service cannot be measured or assured to those obtaining those services, we can say that that electronic service is not verifiable. This potentially leads to the questionable outcome delivered as the output of the service. In other words, we loop back to the electronic resource being verifiable information.
3 Identifying the verifiability of electronic resources and services
As discussed previously, readers tend to trust information resources such as the newspaper, television, and radio more when compared to intangible electronic resources such as internet news items. And we also tied this intuitive human perspective to the fact that these mediums go through numerous checkpoints that verify the information’s reliability before dispersing it to their readers.
Applying the same concept to electronic resources and services, if we can insert checkpoints that verify the truthfulness of these electronic resources before it reaches its users, then we can say that the value of these electronic resources is also high and reliable. So how do we insert checkpoints in the electronic resource verification process?
Similar to human editors and proofreaders, information can go through computing processes that have now been made available through NLP (Natural Language Processing) and NLU(Natural Language Understanding). These are 2 main computer science fields that have tied together, the human perspective of reading and understanding natural language and the way in which machines interpret the same content in their own logic. NLP and NLU’s capabilities have now been extended to perform the following and more functionalities.
- Reading and extracting useful information from raw text or free text.
- Parts of speech tagging.
- Generating synonymous meaningful statements.
- Identifying missing or new information based on available evidence.
- Extract the main concept of a sentence.
- Extract terminology to define the relevant terms.
As soon as a new piece of information is generated and made available, through the application of the above NLP and NLU techniques, that piece of information can be verified, thus validating the quality of the news item before it reaches a potentially larger audience.
Another effective alternative is by applying a human-in-the-loop technique. This is where human evaluators intervene in the process of evaluating electric resources on top of the digital evaluation (NLP and NLU) methods. Notwithstanding, as we are already aware, millions of electronic resources are generated and dispersed every second. Hence, it is not practical to consider even the partial manual evaluation of each and every piece of information that becomes available on the internet by each and every second.
This brings us to exploring our third option of crowdsourcing. This is a concept that has been used in various applications. The following ilustrates the general idea or business model of crowdsourcing as applied in the marketing sector.
However, crowdsourcing’s applicability in verifying electronic resources has been minimal and not very prominent to date. The general idea of crowdsourcing is to outsource the process of verifying information resources to a group of individuals rather than a selected expert. Such verification processes have already been carried out in Knowledge bases such as NELL (Never-ending Language Learner). Various facts that were extracted from raw texts have been labeled by human users over time since 2010. Accordingly, the facts that have been verified will account as true facts while those that have not yet been labeled by human evaluators will continue to remain as uncertain facts and await the response from users. This is a form of crowdsourced evaluation.
As such, if every piece of new information that electronically becomes available can be labeled or evaluated as true or false by an unspecified or unselected group of users, new users or readers, seeking the truthfulness of that information can verify the validity of the information to a certain extent.
4 Being a contributor to verifiable information generation and accessing
Comprehending the differentiation between merely having access to an endless amount of information and accessing verifiable information, users need to understand the importance of being a contributor to generating and accessing verifiable information on the internet and other electronic resources.
Before producing and making information available on digital platforms that can, in turn, make that information available to millions of other readers, the source of the information(the user producing the information) needs to validate the actuality of the facts that he or she is making available publicly.
The cruciality of false information and rumors has augmented with the use of the internet, calling forth for official rules, regulations, and laws to be made active in several countries. The online defamation law is one of these many laws that were made and strict actions will be taken against those who spread false information. This is just a mere example that stresses the importance of information. Another rule is the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which enforces several principles and practices with regard to the data of a person or institute. Ultimately, this regulation is concerned with the value of information.
Hence, this article wraps up the importance of generating, identifying and accessing verifiable information.
Conclusion
With the advent of electronic information resources and the internet, a multitude of data is being generated and disseminated every second. However, not all of this information is verified and thus raises questions with regard to the accuracy and quality of that information. Hence, this article breaks down the important classes of information, elucidate the elements of verifiable and unverifiable information, explicate the manner in which the truthfulness or reliability of the information can be analyzed and finally present how users can be contributors to verifiable electronic resources as well as the rules and regulations concerning information and data protection.
