Who Are You Going to Believe?

There is a lot of information floating around on the internet. With the dawn of the information age, anyone and everyone has the ability to voice their opinion on the web. But a question remains: which voices can be trusted?

This story is in response to an article from George Mason University’s website. The article gives some helpful pointers for wading through the thicket of the internet. I was able to gather quite a few things from it.

1. Credibility:

Credibility is important, and this article emphasized this for me. Two keys to credibility are expertise, and organizational affiliation. The author should have great knowledge of what they are speaking about, and if they are tied to an organization, they are generally more reliable.

2. Bias Isn’t Necessarily Bad

This article made a point that is very insightful. It contended that bias is not always a bad thing. I had never thought of bias in that light before.

I had read some very clearly biased articles before, and knew that such bias should be avoided, but I had never thought of the fact that it is not always bad. In fact, some article will, of necessity, have some bias.

For example, if you are stating political opinion, it will be informed by your positions and bias. This is not bad, but it should be considered when reading an internet article.

3. It Should be Relevant

The article also taught me to consider relevance. If it is not a relevant source, you shouldn’t use it.

There are two different aspects to this. The first is that it should be timely information. The second aspect is that it should be on a website that is appropriate to the content.