Face Work And Credibility On The Web

In this paper, the authors applied Goffman's sociological theory of “Face Work” to an analysis of the Web. The authors stated that a user's ability to judge the credibility of related sites may be enhanced by examining the hyperlinks named on link pages and comparing those to the ones named on other pages. It was discussed that hyperlinks on link pages offer distinct meaning. The authors analyzed only Web communities that contained hyperlinks on link pages, noting the distribution between the number of incoming hyperlinks (in-degree) and the number of out-going ones (out-degree). The reconstructed Web community indicated that no site existed with a high in-degree, as well as a high out-degree. The variation of the evaluated values of the link pages (e.g. the in-degree point) suggested that credible sites could be hyperlinked to other credible sites through link pages. The results of the two analyses suggested that a credible site (an authority) carefully selects the hyperlinks named on its link pages. This qualified selection could be founded on the site administrator's Face Work, which strongly constrains his or her observable conduct. The authors suggested that Face Work could be valid on the Web. They claimed that the observable credibility implied by related sites could be utilized in order to obtain knowledge about an unfamiliar topic.