The internet is a mythical beast. Like ghosts, aliens, luck, a god of your choosing or Miley Cyrus: if you do not believe in it then it ceases to exist.

The internet provides us with essential tools of communication. It has enchanted many with the power of expression and this empowerment is something to be celebrated. The phenomenon of sharing content however is doing three things that simultaneously hinder the quality of what we read online.

Firstly it is affecting our ability to seek out relevant information online. Users simply log-in to a particular page and wait to be told what is relevant. The internet in this circumstance is simply a reflection of society’s own inability to think for itself.

The second, which is linked to the first point in many ways, is that content-makers are becoming increasingly lazy. If you read Buzzfeed for example, you are enabling the laziest form of what they would like to call journalism but is really just a cut and paste of other people’s opinions, photos and stories. Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and the countless other sites that exist purely to drive traffic are like writer’s rooms but without the payoff of something quality worth pitching. It is simply a collection of ideas that a group of people have found elsewhere happening on the internet.

The endless amount of content, particularly that which is being shared has a third impact: it gradually reduces the quality of our information in a way that makes it almost inaccessible. The manipulation of search engines and the shift towards such huge amounts of unchecked and illegitimate plagiarism across the web ensures that in order to find trustworthy sources of integrity and intelligence is proving a laborious and often fruitless task.

It seems the tools we have at our disposal are not equipped to perform a function whereby they can weed out stories that are a replication of an earlier story, where someone has blatantly plagiarised content to serve the purpose of their own “news site” or blog. It seems thousands of ‘outlets’ are reporting the news without doing any actual journalism.

Here’s a good example. Person A does something and is reported by news website B based on something they read on Twitter. News websites C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J all report exactly the same story without any validation of the facts and without checking the integrity of the source, which they believe to be (newspaper B). Because the only concern is attracting page hits in order to generate revenue, the focus these days is not so much on reporting the news but to report what is already being reported elsewhere. This results in a dull, repetitive noise all chanting the same thing for our eyes and ears to learn and consume and then share.

I've seen evidence recently of a news source I always trusted fragrantly lie about events in such a way as to emote a response from it’s readers in a way I never thought an objective press organisation would do. It decided to carry an agenda that the US is calling the world to follow probably because it is about to launch a US version of it’s newspaper in the near future. I am not too proud to admit my mistake in trusting this news source for so many years but it made me wonder how many others would glaze over such an erroneous judgement call in order to not have to look elsewhere for their news or to spend any time at all pursuing alternative sources. I think that’s the real problem here: our laziness and dependence on literal “browsing” contributes to an apathetic indifference.

It’s far easier to see the world in terms of opposites and this kind of storytelling is how news organisations prefer to structure their output, for ease of reference, continuation and to build a story arc they can refer back to for future reference. Sadly, the truth is often far too complex to be broken down in this way, too complex for mob-rule or for the internet to be judge, trial and jury in 140 characters (or less). It is a dangerous reality that social media has become so powerful as to label someone guilty, or a nation guilty, or a politician guilty before the facts have emerged.

In order for the truth to prevail, we need to make more of an effort to read between the lines, question our sources and stop focusing on only major elements of a story. If you’re not asking five questions from everything you read on a given issue you are likely missing or overlooking the small nuances which point to the truth. Remember, all news is deliberate, a careful selection of what someone else deems important. It’s why news without an agenda, a fully objective source of information is so often hard to find. So before you click share, think about what has been written, who by, for what purpose and what they may have missed out. Will your sharing be doing any good? Are there potential victims of your actions? Can a tweet, a solitary brainfart from some angry idiot and a keyboard really summarise all of your thoughts on a given subject?

The internet is not as important as we have been lead to believe. It can still be harnessed and steered towards something that isn't the online equivalent of an imbecile stood on a soapbox screaming nonsense at passers by on the high street corner [the sad thing about this analogy is that online users actually take notice]. All it takes is that aforementioned effort on our part to help quell the noise being made by sharing louder than everyone else.

I'll leave you with a quote that succinctly puts most of my thoughts on this topic into one sentence. This uphill struggle starts with us and it is our responsibility to acknowledge the internet is only good or as honest as we’re willing to make it.

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on”.
- Terry Pratchett, The Truth