世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted between the 26th and 28th of April by goo Research into the trustworthiness of internet information.

Demographics

1,041 members of goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample was male, 18.9% in their teens, 22.8% in their twenties. 19.9% in their thirties, 19.4% in their forties, and 19.0% in their fifties.

The results here really took me aback! Commercial blogs, which by definition are trying to sell you stuff, top the charts, whereas CEO blogs are the least trusted, even though the CEO has a legal obligation (I hope, at least) to tell the truth (or at least not lie) or face prison whereas commercial blogs are trying to sell you stuff and will always tell you how they are better than brand X.

Note that Q1 should really be phrased as “Have you ever obtained information that you determined was incorrect?”

Sadly, this time the presented results fail to directly mention anything about trust in Wikipedia.

Research results

Q1: Have you ever obtained incorrect information from the internet? (Sample size=)

Yes (to SQ)	47.4%
No	52.6%

Compared to when a similar question was asked last year, the number obtaining dud information has increased by 7.7 percentage points, or nearly a 20% increase.

Q1SQ: Where was this incorrect information located? (Sample size=493, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Bulletin board	297	60.2%
Blog	227	46.0%
Portal site	99	20.1%
News site	97	19.7%
Q&A site	65	13.2%
Social Networking Service (SNS)	56	11.4%
Other	28	5.7%

Q2: On which of the following types of blogs do you feel you can trust the information presented? (Sample size=1,041, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Business promotional blog	270	25.9%
Someone I know’s blog	221	21.2%
Famous person’s blog	201	19.3%
Blog with long history	197	18.9%
Frequently updated blog	146	14.0%
A-list blog	129	12.4%
CEO blog	57	5.5%
Other	46	4.4%
Can’t trust any of them	314	30.2%
Don’t know what a blog is	57	5.5%

In addition, when asked about which kinds of media they trusted, the one that most people trusted completely or to some extent was newspapers, with 89.3% having that opinion. Next, 74.8% placed faith in television, then 64.1% on the internet.

Finally, 98.3% agreed that it was necessary to assess the accuracy information obtained through the internet.