Credibility Assessment Using Wikipedia for Messages on Social Network Services

We propose methods for calculating credibility values of messages in Social Network Services (SNSs), such as Linked In and Face book. Many users post messages on SNSs, however, not all of these messages are credible. Our method is based on two assumptions: an SNS message is credible (1) if the SNS message is similar to information from other resources and (2) if the information is confirmed as credible. For assumption (1), we developed a method to retrieve similar descriptions from Wikipedia articles. For assumption (2), we developed a method for assessing Wikipedia articles using the edit history. Using these two methods, we can calculate accurate credibility values for SNS messages. In an experiment, we confirmed that our method can calculate appropriate credibility values for SNS messages if Wikipedia has credible articles related to the SNS messages.