Trusting online information can be challenging. Last fall, news organizations reported that the satirical website The Onion fooled the Chinese government with a story claiming that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was the “sexiest man alive for 2012”. The story ran in China’s People’s Daily as a real news story.
This got me thinking about trusting online information, so I did a search and found a recent doctoral dissertation written by Teun Lucassen for the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology in Enschede, The Netherlands.
Lucassen begins by saying that the Internet is not well organized and finding information is not an easy task, which, of course, is MYIA’s reason for being. And when we find what we are looking for, how do we know we can trust it? Compounding the problem is the explosion of user-generated information. Lucassen correctly questions the motives of all these information providers as well as their knowledge about their topics.
How do you evaluate the credibility of information you find online? Lucassen says problem number one is far fewer gatekeepers (professional editors/journalists). Also, sources are often layered, meaning that information often travels through multiple sources before it reaches you. Internet information also can be altered. Finally, the vast number of sources makes it difficult to find credible information.
So, what should you look for when evaluating the credibility of online information? Lucassen says the best thing publishers can do is provide what he calls “decision support,” which is providing advice about the credibility of the information published. We do it by following standards as defined by these three simple words: timely, truthful and trustworthy. Timely because our information is constantly updated. Truthful because we multiple source every piece of information on the site. And trustworthy, because if we do the first two well we’ll earn your trust.