The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

Internet and Society in a Global Perspective 317
individual web sites. In 2003 74% of Internet users said they trusted
most or all of the information found on the web sites of traditional news
organizations, while only 10% said they trusted information on the web
sites of individuals. This is a distinction that American Internet users
did not make in the first year of our study. The compelling result that
has emerged from the course of the work in the United States is that, as
people use the web more and more for information, continue to rely on
it and develop strong relationships with certain web sites, they have
become more skeptical overall about the information on the entire web.
Figure 13.4 How trustful is the information in the Internet
Percent of adult users (%)
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
13.4
54.0
11.2
29.0
7.2
58.0
18.5
26.4
5.0
59.7
None of it or some of it
Most of it or all of it
Britain
Canada
China
Germany
Hungary
Japan
Korea
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
USA
Compared to other countries, the United States is toward the middle
with regard to belief in the reliability of online information. Using
2003 data, as mentioned above, 53% of American Internet users said
they trusted most or all of the information online. That level of trust is
consistent with Britain (54.0%) and Singapore (54.9%). Slightly higher
faith in the quality and reliability of online information is found in
China (58%) and Hungary (59.7%), while the country in the project
that most trusted the quality of online information was South Korea at
69.7%. More skeptical than these countries were Spain at 47% and
25.3
13.3
4.8
69.7
54.9
18.3 17.6
47.3
36.0
32.3
7.1
53.1