Just came across a neat new term captology:
"The word was coined by Professor Fogg in 1996 as a partial acronym—from
the initial letters of Computers As Persuasive Technology—together with the
ending -ology for a field of study. Someone engaged in the field is a captologist.
Captology
is defined as "the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This
includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products
created for the purpose of changing people's attitudes or behaviors."
An important subissue of captology (or any study
of persuasion) is credibility.
And the folks at the The Stanford
Persuasive Technology Lab, where the term was coined, are spending a lot of
time on the study of web credibility.
Their survey
on web credibility and material on web credibility
guidelines seem especially useful.
This seems very related to my recent entry on trustworthy opinion
discussing slashdot's comment ranking system. The Stanford researchers cite a
similar system, eBay's rating system, as an example of microsuasion
("elements of persuasion built into the user experience"). So I guess
the proper academic name for trustworthy opinion is something more like web
opinion credibility.
6:39:09 AM 
