Google it. That’s what many college students do when asked to read an excerpt of a play for class, write a resume or find the e-mail address of a politician.
They trust Google so much that a Northwestern University study has found many students only click on websites that turn up at the top of Google searches to complete assigned tasks. If they don’t use Google, researchers found that students trust other brand-name search engines and brand-name websites to lead them to information.
The study was published by the International Journal of Communication. (Abstract and Full Text)
[Our Emphasis] “Many students think, ‘Google placed it number one, so, of course it’s credible,’” said Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern. “This is potentially tricky because Google doesn’t rank a site by its credibility.”
No comments:
Post a Comment