A WEBSITE OF MISINFORMATION
AND/OR
MISSING INFORMATION
CSE100/INFO100 Fluency with
Information Technology
Winter 2002
Part 2 details
(updated 1/28/2002)
Historical Context
What
does it mean to have “photographic proof” of an event? Twenty years ago, photographs were taken at
face value. A photograph could serve as
evidence for what it pictured: certain people or things had been in a
particular place, together, at a particular time, doing particular
activities.
What
does it mean to publish valid and authentic papers? Factual reports and accounts of current events? For many, many years well-established
publishing houses – for books, research journals, government documents, and
magazines - have used well-established criteria for validating and
authenticating the materials they print.
A publishing house imprint or media signature carried meaning about the
level and rigor of review for the content – with some imprints conveying
greater rigor (e.g., The MIT Press, NPR) than others (e.g., The National
Inquirer).
This
world of twenty or more years ago, while far from being perfect, did have the
benefits of being able to validate content at a glance. That’s the upside. The downside was the barriers to publication. If your ideas were not “accepted” or
“validated” by the various review boards, your options for publication and dissemination
could be limited. A case in point:
Albert Einstein’s original paper on relativity was turned down by numerous
scientific and mathematical journals.
Enter the Digital Age, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Technology provides unprecedented opportunities for self-publishing and freedom of expression. If Einstein was alive today, he could post his findings on relativity on a Web site and his ideas would instantly be available to billions of individuals across the globe. That’s the upside. But, with unchecked self-publishing comes the downside of content that has never been edited to check for authenticity, for completeness, etc. How is the typical user who down loads a page from the Web to distinguish between the careful considerations of a scientist like Einstein and those of an amateur science fiction writer? Or if the user is looking for travel information or stock recommendations or whatever you wish to fill in here, how is the user to know that information is current, accurate, and complete? With the advent of digital images that can be easily manipulated (and as you will experience in lab), even photographs that previously might have served as “supporting evidence” are called into question.
In the
world we live in today, where the opportunities for self-expression are
seemingly endless, how do we discriminate between truth and fiction? Information and misinformation? What are the ethical limits on how content
should be manipulated? Project 1 is
designed to help you experience first hand the issues surrounding authenticity
and self-expression. Remember that on
the Web, the motivation for publishing misinformation does not always have to
be intentional misdirection. Many, many
sites contain inaccurate information that is published with the best
intentions.
Now fast forward to September,
2001 where technology and terrorism crossed paths on U.S. soil: all of it
broadcasted, live, for a global audience
The Current Situation
Since
September 11th of this year our world has been turned upside down by
surreal events that defy imagination.
Two of the world’s tallest buildings reduced to rubble and thousands
killed. The story itself seams unreal
to those of us who hear of it from afar.
It is only those who visited Ground Zero in the weeks after the attack
who could truly understand the enormity of the destruction and the inability of
any medium to truly capture the horror.
During these frantic months which have produced, quite literally, BILLIONS
of words of information and thousand upon thousands of pictures, two patterns
have emerged that are neither tied together, nor totally separate.
First: Information is disappearing.
Out of concern for National Security, thousands of web pages and web sites have
gone dark-pulled from the WWW for various reasons. Information that has traditionally been publicly accessible by
any citizen is being pulled, not only from web sites, but from libraries and
government installations.
Second: Misinformation is spreading like wildfire
Misinformation, little white lies, selective dissemination of facts, while not
new, has been brought into the limelight because of the global attention
surrounding 9/11. Not only do
counter-intelligence agencies use the media to broadcast subjective, often
dubious reports, but the average person now has the same opportunity.
In this
project, your challenge is to do create a Web site of “misinformation” that appears
as authentic as possible to the user.
That is, while the content of your Web site will be questionable,
everything else about your Web site should convey the opposite. There are no limitations on the topics.
Overall
steps. Read carefully the detailed
instructions for Part 1 and Part2:
(1) Locate a
digital photograph from an online or other source (you can take your own
digital picture if you have access to a digital camera).
(2) Using
Adobe Photoshop, modify that photograph in a subtle but significant way.
(3) Create
some text to support your modified image.
(4) Put your
text and image together on a Web site that appears as authentic as
possible.
(5) Test
your Web site with at least two individuals to see how successful you are at
conveying the authenticity of your “fictional” content.
You may
choose any content area for your Web site as long as it is in good taste and
permits comfortable viewing by everyone in the course. If you’re unsure about the “tastefulness” of
a particular content, it is probably a good idea to talk with your TA or
instructor first, or choose something else.
Here are some possible ideas:
Assignment
1 provided some suggestions for searching for public domain images online.
The Web
site should be in your Dante web area, but should be in a separate directory
from the from the pages you have already created. Name the directory information; name the page you will create for Part 1
as part1.html; name the main or home page for
Part 2 as index.html. Please use this exact spelling and
capitalization so people (such as course staff!) can find your sites easily.
Other names within the site can be whatever you choose. Make sure the directory and the files in it
all have general Unix Read permission.
·
To design and implement a Web site using HTML
·
To manipulate a photograph in Adobe Photoshop
·
To experience first hand the ease with which
“misinformation” can be made available online
·
To reflect on how much information we have lost due to the
events of September 11th and formulate an opinion on whether or not lack of
information can also constitute misinformation when there is nothing to be
found to counter new "facts" that are appearing every day.
·
To become aware of and systematically explore the “cues”
that users may use to assess the content of a Web site
·
To conduct user testing to evaluate your Web site
·
To reflect on the challenges for misinformation online
·
Ultimately, to become an appropriately cautious user of
online information
Images and other files and content on the Internet are protected in the
same way as print materials and photographs.
Use of digital images for purposes of alteration and display on the
Internet has limited coverage under the conditions of fair use: See the Four Factor Fair Use test at: [http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/copypol2.htm].
Public Domain items are those in which the copyright has been lost, has
expired, or the author of the work makes no copyright claims to reproductions
or enhancements of the work.
Photographs taken by Federal Workers and posted on Federal Government
sites are public domain. Photographs
posted on City, County, and State sites have varying copyright policies but
tend to fall in line with Federal copyright guidelines. ALWAYS note the copyright policy of ANY site
you visit, regardless of its status as a commercial, non-profit, government, or
educational site.
If you use an image of a person for reasons of making a profit, you are
responsible for obtaining permission from the person or their heirs. If you use a trademark image, you must also
get permission.
It is valuable to work with a friend or classmate when
learning a new application or working out a problem. However, the work that you
perform in FIT100 for a grade must be your own work unless "working in
groups" is explicitly allowed. The
Projects involved in FIT 100 are NOT intended to be group projects. It is OK to run ideas and scenarios past
your friends or classmates, but the solution you create should be based on what
is inside your own head.
Completion
deadline: Thursday, February 7, 2002,
8:00pm. Please don’t modify the files
after that. Bring printouts to class on
Friday. Unless
you hear otherwise before the due date, please follow the same procedures as
for Part 1, including the two printouts (there’s a possibility we might also
ask for some form of electronic submission).
Details
1.
Using Photoshop or Paint or some other tool available to you, modify the
image(s) as described in Part 1. Don’t
be afraid to try other features of Photoshop, etc. while you are at it!
2.
Make a copy of the part 1 web page to modify – do not modify the
original part1.html file. The new file
should be called part2.html. In your
web site, you may create additional files as needed. They should all be within the original information directory. However, do
not create any files with names that begin with “index,” such as index.html,
index.htm, etc. [Note: this is a change
in the instructions (1/28) compared with Part 1.]
a.
Do whatever you can to make the new page look authentic. For example, replace the original image with
the modified one, remove the text describing the “true” context of the
image; write text to reinforce the authenticity of your modified image, etc.;
add additional links, etc. Your site does not have to follow the format of the
original one, with the four paragraphs, etc.
Remember what you learned about evaluating a Web sites and work on
“improving” some of those features in your Web site. For example, consider how you can use fonts, colors, spelling and
grammar, presentation, textual content, and vocabulary to further enhance the
“credibility” of your image.
3.
Using the more advanced HTML skills you developed in Labs 5 and 6:
a.
Add a mailto link to your email address.
b.
Use styles in at least a couple of places. It’s OK to also use the older ways of formatting text, but
styles are the future of HTML, so show us you know how to use them.
4.
Create a separate Web page in which you reflect on the problem of
misinformation. Keep this in the same
directory, and call it disclaimer.html.
a.
On this “disclaimer” page, provide a disclaimer for the quality of
information on your Misinformation Web site.
b.
Provide a discussion of the ethical issues concerned with conveying the
accuracy, completeness and validity of the information you are presenting. This probably needs at least two paragraphs
to be sufficient.
c.
Include a link from this page (the disclaimer page) back to: your Web
site of misinformation; and to your Dante home page.
Testing
your website:
5.
How effective is your Web site of misinformation? Find out by trying it out on some
unsuspecting visitor! This is a form of
experimentation, a typical tool in many disciplines.
a.
Create a copy of your part 2 Web Misinformation
file. Keep the page in the information directory,
and call the new file main.html. On this
copy, remove the misinformation title and anything else which gives a hint that
the page is bogus. Link this test page
to your disclaimer page and the disclaimer page back to the user test page.
b.
Show this version of
your Web site to two individuals; ideally, people who do not know you’ve been
working on this project. After they’ve
looked at it for a while, have each visitor rate your Web site according to the
evaluation criteria you used in Assignment 2 – source, currency, verifiability,
and so forth. For this purpose, create a table of the user evaluations of your site.
c.
Summarize the results. Include the table and your summary on your
disclaimer page.
d.
Write a paragraph or so of the ethical issues.
e.
Write a final paragraph on your disclaimer page discussing how effective
your Web site was at establishing the credibility of misinformation. How you
could have improved the credibility of your site, especially if you had more advanced
knowledge of HTML or programming?
1.
How well your site meets the requirements named
above, in a technical/HTML sense. The quality of your modified image.
2.
How well your site meets the requirements, in the
content sense; primarily, this refers to the persuasiveness and coherence of
your misinformation (at least 3 means to enhance the authenticity of your
Web site should be used-see the criteria from the readings for Assignment 2).
3.
The care taken in conducting and writing up the
visitor experiment, and the thoughtfulness of your discussions on the
disclaimer page.
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