Website quality in digital media: bibliographic review on general evaluation methods and indicators and reliability attributes

Abstract

Introduction: Faced with the loss of confidence towards Internet content, misinformation, fake news and the financial crisis affecting the press globally, the studies that propose instruments dedicated to evaluating digital media websites are reviewed. Objectives: Identify and characterize the works focused on the digital media analysis, examine their methods and indicators, and check if they consider reliability attributes. Methodology: Scientific production on web quality is examined through a systematic review on 82 articles retrieved from the main databases, detecting quality parameters in general and mentions of web aspects with ethical or social implications. Results and discussion: As part of the findings, it has been found that specific tools to measure the web quality of digital media are scarce and that among the evaluation methods, expert analysis through heuristic inspection predominates over user studies. The most studied parameter is interactivity, understood as a space for participation, followed by usability, information architecture and content, among others. In addition, there are very few mentions to ethical matters - such as misleading links, data protection or correction of information - and almost no references to international guidelines, standards and policies. Conclusions: Numerous studies address specific indicators of digital media, but there are few analysis protocols for the websites that support them. There is a wide margin for improvement in studies of web quality in cybermedia, considering not only technical issues but also parameters of journalistic rigor and informative credibility.