Blogs are terrifying. Thanks to recent hacking scandals, even television news companies are obviously vulnerable via social media. I try to follow certain rules when decided what to trust and how much to trust in general.
No matter how much we all trust wikipedia, no one trusts wikipedia in the slightest. We know better. Some stuff online we know needs to be double checked. Tweets, comments, wikianything... we know better. Blogs fall into that grey area though. What they’re saying is usually true, but what if today’s the day?
My mentor at my internship was discussing how to go about finding sources for a piece he’d assigned me. “Check out blogs, but remember: Blogs are just blogs. They’re, you know, blogs.” And I do know blogs. But what does that even mean? I have a blog. I’m pretty trustworthy, but I’m not actually. And I know every site isn't either. So here are the aforementioned rules.:
Rule #1: If it requests that a user “likes/dislikes” something as the gimmick of site, I think it warrants a double check.
No matter how much we all trust wikipedia, no one trusts wikipedia in the slightest. We know better. Some stuff online we know needs to be double checked. Tweets, comments, wikianything... we know better. Blogs fall into that grey area though. What they’re saying is usually true, but what if today’s the day?
My mentor at my internship was discussing how to go about finding sources for a piece he’d assigned me. “Check out blogs, but remember: Blogs are just blogs. They’re, you know, blogs.” And I do know blogs. But what does that even mean? I have a blog. I’m pretty trustworthy, but I’m not actually. And I know every site isn't either. So here are the aforementioned rules.:
Rule #1: If it requests that a user “likes/dislikes” something as the gimmick of site, I think it warrants a double check.
Rule #2: If it seems ridiculous, it warrants a double check. My favorite example of this is cracked.com. I love cracked. It's hilarious. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's ridiculous.
Rule #3: If it's a news site that exists in other spheres, I'll be more likely to trust it. NPR has a lot to lose giving me news that isn't credible.
So those are the basics. I'm afraid to dig any deeper, because conspiracy theories terrify me. I'm not saying I'm right, and I'm definitely not saying these rules are timeless. This is just what works for me right now. You can't believe everything you read, but why read if you won't believe anything?
(While we're on the topic of what online we can actually trust when we read it, The Atlantic posted this. I think I trust The Atlantic enough to buy it.)
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