UA News

The UA School of Information Resources and Library Science is hosting a roundtable that will delve into the issue of information ethics.

Given issues related to access to information, privacy, intellectual property and intellectual freedom, ethics comes to the fore.

To address such issues, the School of Information Resources and Library Science at The University of Arizona is hosting its 2009 Information Ethics Roundtable next month.

Registration is currently open for the conference, "Misinformation and Disinformation," which will held 9:50 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, April 3. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. About 70 people are expected. Refreshments will be provided.

The conference will continue on April 4 at 9 a.m. and run until 5 p.m. Both sessions of the conference will be held in Room 205 at the UA's Marvin D "Swede" Johnson Building, located at 111 N. Cherry Avenue, at Speedway Boulevard.

Researchers, educators and practitioners from philosophy, law, archeology, environmental studies, journalism, American Indian studies and library and information science will convene at the school, also known as SIRLS, for the conference.

This year's roundtable will try to address questions such as What are misinformation and disinformation?; How can both be detected?; What are the ethics of creating and controlling misinformation and disinformation?

The conference will feature discussions, research presentations and lectures led by nationally-recognized experts. The list of featured speakers include Roy Sorensen with the Washington University philosophy department and Soo Young Rieh of the University of Michigan School of Information.

Members of the public are invited to attend the conference, which is free. SIRLS is collaborating with the Research Group on the History and Philosophy of Information Access, which is comprised of faculty in the school, to host the conference.

With the coming of the Internet and other new information technologies, a major problem as been "information overload," said Don Fallis, a UA adjunct associate professor of philosophy and an associate professor in SIRLS.

In 2003, three SIRLS faculty members wrote a paper responding to censorship and developed the idea to form a discussion to talk about such information, Fallis said, adding that he was part of the initial group. SIRLS has held a new conference each year since.

Given the massive amount of information available and the ability to post most anything on the Internet, it becomes challenging for individuals to find specific information and also reliable information.

"There is no guarantee that the authors of Web sites have the necessary expertise on the topics that they discuss. As a result, some people may accidentally be disseminating misinformation," Fallis said. "There is also no guarantee that the authors of Web sites are even sincere."

In the words of the roundtable's organizers, some people may be intentionally disseminating disinformation. Such inaccurate and misleading information can clearly lead to serious harm.

For instance, studies have shown that more people turn to the Web for information related to health and medical care.

Also, while more and more people are using Wikipedia as a principal source of information, many individuals have been caught manipulating entries in this encyclopedia in self-serving ways.

Concerns about information quality are not unique to the Internet. Such worries arise with almost any information source, including television, newspapers, books and periodicals.

"We are confronted with spin, half-truths, propaganda and honest mistakes on a daily basis from multiple sources of information," Fallis said. "Information technologies have become more essential to our social, economic and political interactions. Serious reflection on information quality is now critical."