Information Quality

Full Title and Meme

Information quality refers to the value and reliability of information, often assessed based on its fitness for use in a specific context.

Context

High-quality information is essential for effective decision-making, communication, and operations across various fields. Here are some key dimensions of information quality:

1. Accuracy: The information should be correct and free from errors.
2. Relevance: It must be applicable and useful for the intended purpose.
3. Timeliness: Information should be up-to-date and available when needed.
4. Completeness: It should provide all necessary details without omissions.
5. Consistency: The information should align with other data and not contain contradictions.
6. Accessibility: It must be easy to access and use, while maintaining appropriate security.

These dimensions are often used in frameworks to evaluate and improve the quality of information in systems, organizations, and decision-making processes.

Problems

Even if the data meets the quality metrics described above, the value of the Information can be compromised by many other criteria that need to be evaluated, perhaps as the information is put to use.

Propaganda Model

The Propaganda Model, developed by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent is a framework for understanding how systemic biases and propaganda operate in mass media. It explains how media serves the interests of powerful elites by shaping public opinion and manufacturing consent for policies. The model identifies five key "filters" that influence media content:

1. Ownership: Media outlets are often owned by large corporations, whose interests can shape the news agenda.
2. Advertising: Media relies heavily on advertising revenue, which can lead to self-censorship to avoid offending advertisers.
3. Sourcing: News often depends on information from government, business, and "experts," which can limit diverse perspectives.
4. Flak: Negative responses or pressure from powerful groups can discipline media to align with dominant interests.
5. Fear Ideology: In the original model, anti-communism was a unifying ideology; today, it could be replaced by other fear-based narratives.

This model highlights how economic and political power can influence media narratives, often marginalizing dissenting voices. Chomsky has always been good a ferreting out problems in society, but his solutions have been idealistic. In this model and subsequent books he pushed for democratizing information in the way that the Internet made possible. That realized solution has been a major disaster.

Political Order

Fukuyama has a different information model:

... when the information age's most enthusiastic apostles celebrate the breakdown of hierarchy and authority, they neglect one critical factor: trust, and the shared ethical norms that underlie it. Communities depend on mutual trust and will not arise spontaneously without it. Low-trust societies, by contrast, must fence in and isolate their workers with a series of bureaucratic rules. Workers usually find their workplaces more satisfying if they are treated like adults who can be trusted to contribute to their community rather than like small cogs in a large industrial machine ...