Technorati and Authority

Authority, in the context of this post is defined as:
a book or other source able to supply reliable information or evidence.

While writing about Cynthia McKinney's loss last week I did a Technorati search on the subject to see what was posted online. There was, as expected a great deal of posts on the subject most of which were downright personally nasty. so in order to try to cut through the chatter and reach blogs that had real information, pro or con, I decided to sort the results by "authority". Of course I was expecting authority to be defined as I had it above (taken from the dictionary). when I saw that many of the libelous and insulting posts were at the top of the results returned I began to wonder what exactly Technorati considered "authoritative". It appeared that the qualification for "authoritative" was the number of links a blog (or article) received. So you can post material that is factually incorrect and potentially libelous material and be ranked as a "highly authoritative" blog or blog post on the matter because a whole lot of people have links to your blog. So I revisited the definition of "authority" to see if perhaps I missed something. Well one definition is:

The power to influence others, esp. because of one's commanding manner or one's recognized knowledge about something.

This definition reminded me of the definition of "popularity":

The state or condition of being liked, admired or supported by many people

it seems to me that, at least on this subject, many of the "authoritative" bloggers were authoritative only in their perceived influence on others by means of measuring their inbound blog links rather than the actual accuracy or veracity of their blogs or blog entries. But the blogs are not authoritative in the first instance nor are they strictly authoritative based on the second definition. Indeed it appears that in reality these blogs "Authoritativeness" is based on their actual popularity which is ultimately the only thing that inbound links can actually measure by themselves. The scary thing about this is that as I've noticed in my stat reports, students as well as other people, apparently use blogs for reference material. I've noticed a number of people coming in from Word documents with term paper like names. Now using my blog as a reference is not a problem because I don't simply post my opinion. 99% of the time I provide direct links and extensive quotations from primary sources.

Last night I was sort of watching a re-run of Rambo: First Blood on UPN-9. One thing that has changed at the network is the new "My UPN" or
"MY 9" logo. I cannot help but to think that this is a direct consequence of the "Myspace" phenomenon where anyone can post their thoughts about anything and try to get themselves or their favorite band or whomever promoted to alpha my-spacer by getting linked to by as many people as possible. This My-spacification of information is what I see at Technorati. information is based not on the veracity of the information posted, but on the popularity of the author. This My-Spacification, this cult of popularity is a problem to me. The pressure is to conform to and cater to a peer group and to give them that which maintains ones popularity rather than the pressure to grow that comes from the valuation of ones contribution being based on accuracy and critique.

Ah well, here's to not being considered authoritative.

;-)

Technorati Tags: critique, Technorati