"What i know is...": establishing credibility on Wikipedia talk pages

This poster presents a new theoretical framework and research method for studying the relationship between specific types of authority claims and the attempts of contributors to establish credibility in online, collaborative environments. We describe a content analysis method for coding authority claims based on linguistic and rhetorical cues in naturally occurring, text-based discourse. We present results from a preliminary analysis of a sample of Wikipedia talk page discussions focused on recent news events. This method provides a novel framework for capturing and understanding these persuasion-oriented behaviors, and shows potential as a tool for online communication research, including automated text analysis using trained natural language processing systems.