Bonus Unit: (Colloquially) How do we assess what we know?
15 Evaluating Online Information: Overview
Evaluating Online Information: Overview
Misinformation Can Hurt You
Why should you care about whether or not your news is real or fake?
- You deserve the truth. You are smart enough to make up your own mind – as long as you have the real facts in front of you. You have every right to be insulted when you read fake news, because you are, in essence, being treated like an idiot.
- Fake news destroys your credibility. If your arguments are built on bad information, it will be much more difficult for people to believe you in the future.
- Fake news can hurt you, and a lot of other people. Purveyors of fake and misleading medical advice like Mercola.com and NaturalNews.com help perpetuate myths, like “HIV and AIDS aren’t related,” or that vaccines cause autism. These sites are heavily visited and their lies are dangerous.
- Real news can benefit you. If you want to buy stock in a company, you want to read accurate articles about that company so you can invest wisely. If you are planning on voting in an election, you want to read as much good information on a candidate so you can vote for the person who best represents your ideas and beliefs. Fake news will not help you make money or make the world a better place, but real news can.
The text above was originally created by KT Lowe, Librarian at Indiana University East. She shared it with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Skills for Good News Consumption
Librarians take access to accurate information seriously, and we know you do, too.
We put this guide together to help students gain practical skills and new ways of thinking about how to navigate the information they encounter, and for faculty and librarians to incorporate these ideas into their classes. This guide presents information about each of the following topics on the tabs below:
- Understanding types of misinformation, or chapter 19 of this book
- Lateral reading, or chapter 16 of this book
- Reverse image searching, or chapter 20 of this book
- Logical fallacies
- Bias
- Fact-checking resources
Our profession, through the American Library Association, resolves to continue playing a leading role in providing access to accurate information. See: ALA’s Resolution on Access to Accurate Information.
About the Authors
Timothy Arnold is the International Reference & Collections Librarian.
Katie Hassman is an Undergraduate Engagement Librarian.
John Elson is the US Federal and State Government Information Librarian.
Cathy Cranston is an Undergraduate Engagement Librarian.
Thanks to Dan Chibnal and Zubair Shafiq for reviewing this guide.
This information was brought to you by…
The wonderful Timothy Arnold, Librarian Extraordinaire, who left the university of Iowa in January 2023. Timothy was a guest in Doc’s methods lecture every semester from 2018-2022 and we wanted to be sure to capture his wisdom in case it left the UI library websites. This chapter came directly from the University Libraries page, ‘Evaluating Online Information.’
