Two Faces Of Credibility Essay

We consider two faces of credibility here-the ways in which young people establish their own credibility and young people’s capacities for assessing the credibility of others. Although the ability to evaluate others’ credibility is important and can have ethical implications, our principal concerns here are the judgments and actions of young people that affect their own credibility. How do young people decide to present themselves-their credentials, skills, and motivations-to various others in various contexts? For our purposes here, credibility is about being accurate and authentic when representing one’s competence and motivations.

Signaling credibility is at once easier and more difficult online when traditional means for conveying competence

Participation is the culminating ethical issue in the new digital media, and it arguably subsumes the issues of identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, and credibility. Participation centers on the roles and responsibilities that an individual has in community, society, and the world.

In sum, opportunities for youth to assume empowering social roles online can endow them with a sense of responsibility to others, to their communities, and to society.

Young people may limit their participation to groups that subscribe to and reinforce a myopic or prejudicial worldview. Participation in the new media can thus lead to a resurgence of hate mongering, neo-Nazi groups, or terrorist organizations as surely as it can stimulate positive deliberative discourse and the exposure of injustices large and small.

Young people may limit their participation to groups that subscribe to and reinforce a myopic or prejudicial worldview. Participation in the new media can thus lead to a resurgence of hate mongering, neo-Nazi groups, or terrorist organizations as surely as it can stimulate positive deliberative discourse and the exposure of injustices large and