Reading on the World Wide Web: Dealing with conflicting information from multiple sources

Abstract

Reading on the Internet requires learners to integrate information from multiple sources of differing quality, often presenting conflicting information. This theoretical poster presents an overview of two important factors and processes involved in this process, namely epistemic beliefs and prior attitudes. A recent review has already described the importance of epistemic beliefs on multiple-text comprehension (Bråten, Britt, Strømsø, & Rouet, 2011). However, attitudes influence information processing as well, for instance when reading on controversial issues (Kobayashi, 2010).