Subjectivity Filtering: Finding Cognitive Authority in Online Social Media Opinion Posts

Abstract

Despite modern-day advances, we remain a society of hunter-gatherers (O’Connor et al., 2003). It is precisely one modern-day advance that fuels human foraging behavior; the Internet. Prolific information available via the Internet has replaced ‘food’ with ‘useful information’ as the object of foraging. Forays into the unfamiliar are a driving factor to seek information that Blair (1990) labels as a pragmatic and contingent activity. The technological explosion of information ushered in by the Internet, and more so with online social media (OSM), has infused an “undercurrent of urgency” (Blair, 1990) in information seeking. The lack of authority in this online domain, rarely before encountered in information seeking, unwittingly allows for decision-making based on opinion and misinformation rather than fact. Yet the “road to objectivity [in science] is paved with subjectivity (Root-Bernstein, 1997). Thus, I propose that personal opinion, in the form of online comments, are functional documents that inform decisions therefore placing them in the realm of use. The idea that the opinion of others, widely available via online social media (OSM), function as useful documents that inform in times of uncertainty warrants examination through a new lens to identify cognitive authority (CA).