Alexander Halavais

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alexander Campbell Halavais, (b. July 21, 1971) is a professor of interactive communication at Quinnipiac University and a social informatics researcher. Before joining the faculty at Quinnipiac, Halavais taught in the School of Informatics at the University at Buffalo and at the University of Washington.

In 1993, Halavais earned a bachelors degree in political science from the University of California, Irvine, and he received a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Washington in 2001. His dissertation examined the social implications of the Slashdot website. He also completed coursework in communications and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego and complex adaptive systems at the Santa Fe Institute.

Online Journalism Review has referred to Halavais as one of a number of "blogologists," exploring the ways in which social computing affects the society at large. His work has explored how blogs are used in education, the patterns of international hyperlinks, and the role of pornography on the Internet. He is the editor of a volume on Cyberporn & Society, and a member of the executive board for the Association of Internet Researchers.

To test the Wikipedia as a trustworthy source of accurate information, Professor Halavais created a new username and inserted 13 errors into various Wikipedia articles. All the articles were corrected within three hours. During a presentation he admitted that placing all thirteen of the errors at one time probably affected his testing intent.^[1]