INFORMATION DISORDER IN THE GLAM SECTOR: THE CHALLENGES OF CROWD SOURCED CONTRIBUTIONS

Abstract

For some years information systems researchers have looked at crowdsourcing as a way for individuals, organizations and institutions to co-create content and generate value. Although there are many potential benefits of crowdsourcing, the quality control of crowd contributions stands out as one of the most significant challenges. Crowds can create the information contents but at the same time can facilitate information disorder: misinformation, disinformation and mal-information. Crowd created information is a dominant element in what is sometimes called the post-truth era. A small piece of misleading information can constitute significant challenges to the information sharing group or society. This misinformation can reshape in various ways how information-driven communities make sense of their world. As information disorder and its effects have recently started to be recognised as a potential problem in IS research, we need to explore this phenomenon in more detail, to understand how it happens and why. This multiple case study is aimed at appraising information disorder through crowd-created contents in the knowledge and cultural heritage organisations such as Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM). We intend to investigate the quality control mechanisms that might be used to prevent and minimise the effects of information disorder from crowdsourced contributions.