Aims and Objectives
The Web has rapidly become a very widely used tool for seeking information, but we know very little about how – and what type of - information is found. To explore this question, we examined a particular group of people – academic researchers – and a set of topics that could be said to be of global interest, including HIV/Aids, climate change, terrorism, and internet and society. The central hypothesis to be examined was: does the ‘winner-take-all’ hypothesis apply to online resources? That is, is there a greater concentration – or a democratizing effect - of online as opposed to offline resources?
To give a concrete example: people were to look for research about climate change or terrorism: would you expect that they go to and find a wide array of diverse sources of information about these topics, or expect them to be directed to only a few of the same top sites? Would you expect them to encounter the most highly regarded researchers, or also marginal ones that are less well-regarded?
Main Research Results
The main findings were:
- The winner-take-all hypothesis is not well-supported, given the more fractal or clique-like structure of networks
- certain clusters of institutions and research are more prominent online
- the top web sites form highly linked cliques, with the vast bulk of web sites much less-well linked
- when researchers access online resources, the type of search and the topic make a difference
- that search engines (eg. Google) exercise a major gatekeeping function
- that there are certain fields (such as HIV/Aids) where online resources are more structured, as against others (such as terrorism) where online resources are more dispersed. This is important for whether search engines exercise a greater or lesser gatekeeping role in research.
These findings have been arrived at by means of webmetric analysis (crawling the web and identifying links), a validation by experts/focus groups, and interviews with researchers.
Dissemination Activities
Among the main academic outputs and achievements were three papers (further papers are planned), one in a Conference proceeding, one to be published in the Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, and one in an edited book. The journal issue and edited book are both being published in outlets which are among the first collections on this topic, and so will have high visibility. This topic is currently receiving attention in the press and among a wide public, including policymakers.
The project held two major workshops and several special lectures which included non-academic participants and generated considerable interest, including in the mass media. The growing interest in the topic have also led us to consider follow-up research, including extensions to the project (which was limited by resources) to go beyond academic researchers, and to engage in more systematic study of who access the Web for what purposes and with what results - in view of the differential availability and visibility of online resources.
Significance for Policy and Practice
The findings have a number of implications:
- one is that researchers and others who use the Web to disseminate information need to consider not only what information they make available on the Web, but also how this information will reach its audiences.
- second, it is not just the quality of the sites and of the information presented, but also how it is positioned in relation to other sources that are available
- third, as wider parts of society use the Web as a vital means to gain access to services, to public information, and to information critical in everyday life, the role of search engines and other gateways to expertise and knowledge deserves much more attention, especially as considerable resources are being deployed to develop search tools, online libraries and repositories, and many more.
The main finding of the study is that the Web is not governed by a simple winner-take-all dynamic, but at the same time, the Web is not just a pathway to unlimited amounts of information (which is how it is popularly regarded). It has a particular structure that determines access. In general, the ‘presence’ – or visibility - of a particular topic or source of information on the Web matters more and more. Moreover, search engines, which are widely (almost universally) used by researchers, play a gatekeeper function. This research has illuminated this ‘visibility’ for six global topics and among academic researchers. A broader implication of this research project is that policymakers and technology developers should think about how the Web provides access to knowledge and information for other topics, and for a wider population: how the Web can be made into a more useful source for addressing global issues – among researchers, but also in classrooms, in homes and at work. This will be an issue not just for policymakers, but for educators, organizations involved in science and research communication, regulators responsible for access to the Web, and citizens who are concerned with the diversity and richness of the information in the world around them.