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Web Literacy: Credibility of Web Sources 3172 Views


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Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:06

Credibility of Online Sources

00:10

[ bird caws ]

00:11

What is a credible source?

00:13

So, first let's look at that word.

00:15

"Credible" basically just means "believable."

00:17

It means "trustable."

00:19

- Like street cred? - Exactly.

00:20

There's probably some Latin derivative of that.

00:21

- There is, actually. - Wow.

00:23

- I think. I know there is an Italian derivative. - Well, "credo" would be...

00:26

Right, exactly.

00:28

So, in Italian, and I'm assuming Latin,

00:30

the verb means "to believe."

00:32

Credibility means that you can trust or believe that source.

00:35

That's basically it.

00:37

If you go to Joe Shmoe's blog

00:39

and you read about something

00:41

versus going to a .gov site

00:44

and reading about something.

00:45

.Gov is more credible.

00:47

That's kind of what it comes down to.

00:49

But there are a few ways that you can determine credibility.

00:52

And we talked a little bit about this with

00:54

what sources are cited.

00:56

But there's four main categories.

00:58

Let's see if I can get them.

00:59

Authority,

01:01

currency,

01:03

objectivity, and support.

01:05

So let's start with authority.

01:07

This is the big one.

01:08

Basically, who wrote it?

01:10

Why did they write it?

01:11

and should we believe them?

01:13

are the questions we want to ask.

01:15

Who's the author?

01:16

Is the author someone who has

01:19

the right background information to be giving us this information?

01:22

Where are the author's credentials?

01:24

Does it just say,

01:25

"Dave Siminoff"?

01:26

Or does it say "Dave Siminoff, founder of Shmoop"?

01:29

How do we know?

01:29

And if you don't know, go ahead and look the person up.

01:31

See who they are.

01:33

You wanna know where is this article being published?

01:38

Or where is -- Whether it's an article or whatever it is online,

01:40

where it's being published.

01:41

Is it in a news source that you know to be credible?

01:44

Is it in a tabloid which is not as credible?

01:47

Is it on a blog? Is it on Wikipedia? Et cetera.

01:51

So where the author is publishing it is important.

01:54

And you can go down the list.

01:55

But the main question here is

01:57

"Is the person writing it and the people publishing it

02:00

together are they people you can trust in?"

02:04

And you might need to do some checking to find that out.

02:08

Fair enough. And it's called LinkedIn.

02:10

It's really good for checking these things.

02:11

So the second thing is currency or, "Is the information current?"

02:16

Number one thing, always look for a date.

02:18

Depending on what you're reading about,

02:20

it might not be as important.

02:21

When you're talking about celebrities and fame,

02:23

you definitely want current stuff.

02:24

So you might be reading an article and be like,

02:26

"Oh, man! There was a study that showed that

02:28

zebras can talk?

02:30

That's crazy!"

02:31

And then it turns out that was in 2009

02:34

and they did another study in 2014

02:36

- and realized zebras can't talk. - Or it would've been 2009 BC

02:39

- and Noah was having the conversation. - [ laughs ] Exactly, exactly.

02:42

So, yeah, you have to make sure that the information is current.

02:45

That's really important when it comes to stuff like science

02:47

which changes all the time.

02:48

The third thing is objectivity.

02:50

This is what we talked about before.

02:51

Is it an objective source?

02:52

How do we find objectivity?

02:54

Because we're in a world today

02:55

where there are very few truly neutral sources.

02:58

The evening news and, I guess with early cable news,

03:01

was unapologetically brutally honest.

03:04

And it showed pictures that were graphic

03:06

that you wouldn't see in a normal prime time setting.

03:09

And it was a journalist's credo

03:11

to be credible, to be honest.

03:14

Even if it went against their own beliefs

03:15

and their own political bias,

03:17

they strove to tell the truth.

03:22

Today's world could not be more different.

03:25

Everyone -- It's like they're marketing for a political side

03:28

in one venue or another.

03:30

It's like trying to view

03:31

the world's history through a big, thick thing of gauze.

03:34

Because nothing is clear anymore.

03:36

There's very few honest lights.

03:38

As you said, that's kind of how the world is.

03:41

It's very hard to find an objective source.

03:43

Even scientific, academic papers

03:46

have some sort of bias from the author.

03:48

There always is.

03:49

The baggage an author or a publisher brings with them to a text

03:54

is always gonna skew the language

03:57

and how it's written one way or another.

03:58

So all we can do is be aware of that

04:00

and be ready for it.

04:01

It's totally fine to cite something

04:03

from a right-leaning or left-leaning source,

04:05

as long as you acknowledge

04:07

that it is right-leaning or left-leaning

04:09

and therefore might be biased.

04:11

We can't control how biased a specific journalist is

04:16

or author of a text is.

04:17

All we can do is be prepared for it

04:20

and understand that and really look for it.

04:22

So you're looking for maybe the most objective possible.

04:25

If you have a choice between

04:26

a newspaper article that's written in Fox news

04:31

or one that's written in MSNBC

04:33

and one that's written in something that people might say

04:35

is a little more neutral,

04:36

then you would wanna go with the more neutral one

04:38

if you had the choice.

04:39

If you didn't, and those were your two options,

04:41

great, use them. But say,

04:42

"Hey, I acknowledge this.

04:44

While MSNBC is left-leaning,

04:47

so we have to take what they say with a grain of salt,

04:50

they say that blah blah blah..."

04:52

And then the same with Fox news.

04:53

So we just have to be aware of it.

04:55

Got it. Makes sense.

04:56

And then the last category is support.

04:58

And this is when we're talking about citing sources.

05:00

Who is the author or the publisher citing?

05:04

When you come to Shmoop,

05:05

we don't cite Wikipedia as a source.

05:08

So, I love Wikipedia, I'm just gonna say that.

05:10

If I need to know, like you said,

05:12

just some basic information about something,

05:13

absolutely start there.

05:15

But that's what I always say, "Start there."

05:17

If you have no idea

05:19

what a topic is about --

05:21

If you were to say to me right now,

05:23

"I need you to know what this tiny particle of an atom

05:28

of a nucleus something is."

05:30

I have no idea what you're talking about, clearly.

05:32

[ laughs ] As you can tell by what I just said.

05:34

So finding a scientific article about it isn't gonna help me.

05:39

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to Wikipedia

05:40

and I'm gonna be like, "Oh, this is what he's talking about."

05:42

Then I'm gonna go to the scientific article.

05:43

So just get that out there,

05:45

Wikipedia is a fine place to get an overview

05:48

of a subject.

05:49

You just can't necessarily trust everything you read

05:51

because it's written by people like you who know nothing.

05:54

Wikipedia does have experts writing,

05:57

but it also has people with huge biases writing.

06:01

And while it's moderated,

06:03

not everything is caught.

06:04

And you go to pages and it'll say like,

06:06

"This article is a stub." or "This article doesn't cite its sources."

06:09

And you see that a lot on Wikipedia.

06:11

So you just have to be really careful.

06:12

The one thing you can do if you are using Wikipedia is

06:15

anything that's not cited, don't trust it.

06:18

And if it's cited, there's that little blue number next to it.

06:21

Click it. It drops you down to the bottom of the page.

06:23

And it shows you what that source was.

06:26

Go to the original source.

06:27

If so-and-so said --

06:29

This is the page on zebras and it says,

06:31

"Zebras can talk."

06:33

and there's a little source,

06:34

click down to the link,

06:35

and if you click on that and it is a link to Nature

06:38

or Science or some periodical that's valued,

06:41

then you go, "Hey! Zebras can talk! Okay."

06:43

If you read that and it actually says that.

06:45

Yeah, and more likely than not, it's a link

06:47

- to NFL Referees. - Exactly.

06:49

[ laughs ] Exactly.

06:51

So you always have to check the source.

06:54

And that trickles down everything you're reading.

06:57

Whenever you're reading something, check the source,

06:58

check that person's source, check that person's source.

07:01

[ pen writing ]

07:03

What is a primary source?

07:06

What is a secondary source?

07:08

How can sources vary in credibility?

07:14

And that's "vary" with an "A."

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