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Page not found
Just because information is on the web today doesn't mean it will
stay there according to study by Greenlee School professors.
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It's the dreaded code that pops up when information isn't available on
the Internet.
404 - page not found.
It's a problem that Michael Bugeja, professor and director of the Greenlee
School of Journalism and Communication, found out first hand.
In his latest book, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community
in a Technological Age, Bugeja used on-line citations. But when he
went back to find those sources at a later date his inquiry was often
met by 404 - page not found.
That experience led Bugeja to wonder if that code wasn't becoming more
prevalent in research articles. Collaborating with Daniela Dimitrova,
assistant professor in the Greenlee School, the two colleagues found out
that was more often the case than either thought.
Dimitrova and Bugeja initially examined links cited in articles accepted
in 2003 by the Communication Technology and Policy (CTP) division of the
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
This initial study found that, of the 108 links cited in the CTP research
papers, 40 percent no longer worked.
Recently Dimitrova and Bugeja expanded their study to look at every article
published in five prominent communication journals from 200 to 2003 to
determine the status of every on-line citation listed.
“We calculated the half-life of Internet footnotes,” Dimitrova said, “and
we found that 33 percent of the (links to the) on-line citations did not
work in the summer of 2004. So the on-line information cited in many of
the articles in these referred journals simply disappeared. I really think
everyone has experienced this problem in their lives.”
Dimitrova says the implications are obvious.
“If you can't rely on a footnote, then the validity of these studies and
papers is undermined. How can people determine if the study is genuine
or if the data are faked?” she said.
“This is important on multiple levels,” she continued. “Not only to journalists
but to scholars, teachers and students in every field.”
The Greenlee professors estimate that the half-life of the online citations
included in the study is approximately three years and seven months.
“The further we looked back at journals, the more difficult it was to
find the references,” Dimitrova said. “Many of the sites that were cited
in the journals just didn't exist anymore.”
The study found that government sites (.gov) were the most reliable, followed
by organizations (.org) and finally general sites (.com).
“It's interesting to note however that the largest number of citations
used in the articles came from .com web sites,” Dimitrova said. “Many
of the on-line citations take you to the web page's home page instead
of a particular page or a database within the site.
“The goal of this research is not only to document the problem of decaying
online footnotes, but to formulate policy recommendations for researchers,
scholars, editors and journalists," she added.
A research paper that Dimitrova and Bugeja have written has not only been
accepted at the annual conference of the International Communication Association
(ICA), but was named a top paper in its division.
The duo will deliver the paper in late May at the ICA convention in New
York City.
Around LAS
March 28 to April 10, 2005
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