But How Would I Look in a White Lab Coat?

Rhetoricians aren't the only people thinking about persuasion and credibility on the World Wide Web; my colleagues in the social sciences study it too. According to the website of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, their mission is to create "insight into how computing products -- from websites to mobile phone software --— can be designed to change what people believe and what they do." Their study of captology or the function of "computers as persuasive technology," aimed at changing attitudes and behaviors, is certainly relevant to the use of digital media and distributed networks in service of the four major trends in political rhetoric that have been covered in Virtualpolitik: 1) social marketing, 2) public diplomacy, 3) risk communication, and 4) institutional branding.

However, given that the coiner of the term, BJ Fogg, is a specialist in evaluating how websites establish their authority, I was surpriseded to see that his most recent post on his blog featured a four-letter word associated with anger, urination, and in certain cultural contexts extreme drunkenness.

The Stanford group conducts Web Credibility Research through a related set of projects and professional associations. Apparently "bonafide academics" are eligible to receive free resources with which to teach the subject to their undergraduates. I am both curious about their offerings and committed to their laudable goals. Nonetheless, their list of carefully researched "design factors" doesn't look that different from the ad hoc evaluation criteria of more idiosyncratic librarians, such as early-adopter Susan Beck.

I also learned about the Credibility Commons on Fogg's blog. Unfortunately, their dormant website seems to indicate that a promising idea for wiki-style deliberation about ethos had failed to generate the necessary virtual community to contribute to it. Of course, I have some theories about why certain web-based collaborative databases fail and others succeed that might be applicable to this case.

Critics who are invested in the Ong-ian position that the Internet may give new primacy to traditional forms of oral culture may be interested in Fogg's social networking start-up as well: YackPack. YackPack is aimed at users who may already trend toward oral/aural venues like Voice Over IP or Podcasting. Perhaps this is yet another indicator of a larger sea change in electronic communication.