The Age of Unrestricted Web Publishing, How to Discern the Truth

Today I read an article from the New York Times by Denise Grady entitled, "U.S. Scientists See Long Fight Against Ebola.

The article focused on the deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could affect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control.

The article drew on multiple sources which consisted of scientists, epidemiologist and researchers. These sources included Bryan Lewis (Epidemiologist at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.), Tom Skinner (Spokesman of Centers for Disease Control & Prevention), Dr. Thomas R. Frieden (CDC Director), Alessandro Vespignani (Prof. of Computational Science at Northern University), Jeffery L. Shaman (Associate Prof. of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), Thomas Giesbert (Ebola Expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galvenston), Lone Simonsen (Research Prof. of Global Health at George Washington University), and Stuart T. Nichol (Chief of CDC's Viral Special Pathogens Branch). 

I had never heard of any of these experts, so I did a Google search of the names cited in the article and found multiple sources that could collaborate their positions and credibility in their respective fields of epidemic research and tracking. 

While the article contained numerous sources in these fields there were no sources listed. Just this announcement/advertisement - A version of this article appears in print on September 13, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Scientists See Long Fight Against Ebola. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe. Even though the New York Times has a positive reputation for it's reporting, however, how can the audience trust that the information from the sources cited isn't manipulated to address one side of this topic?

How do you know what you know?

Each one of knows lots of things. We know our name. We know our address. We know the sum of two plus two. However, at times people can have conflicting things they know to be true. How do we come to know things? How is it possible for different people to know different things to be true?

The two ways I can think of is through personal experience or what we are told or taught. Each of us knows things we learned on our own. For example stubbing your toe is painful. Knowledge like this we pick up early in life. If you know something and you didn’t experience it yourself, someone had to tell you. The earliest form of being told something is through our education. Where we learned things  to be true, like “dog” is spelled “d-o-g."

I would stand to believe that it's a combination of our personal experiences and what someone tells us that assists us in determining what is true. Taking into consideration how reliable we consider the person telling us something.

Today while checking my Facebook news feed I came across a post a friend of mine had shared a link via The Weather Channel, Small Meteorite Strikes in Nicaragua’s Capital City of Managua. This particular post caught my eye knowing that an asteroid was due to pass close to Earth over the weekend.

In the article a Government spokeswoman, Rosaio Murillo, said a committee formed by the government to study the event determines it was a “relatively small” meteorite that “appears to have come off an asteroid that was passing close to Earth.” House-sized asteroid 2014 RC, which measured 60 feet in diameter, skimmed the Earth this weekend, ABC News reports.

I determined to be true by the reliable sources were attached to this article. These sources involved The Associated Press and The Weather Channel. I believe that reliability is a great factor to people’s trust in what shows up through social media to be true.

Social media can provide instant news faster than traditional news outlet or sources and can be a great wealth of information, but there is also an ever-increasing need to verify and determine accuracy of information. I believe with social media people need to be their own researcher to determine what is fact versus opinion or false.

Influence of New Media

New media, ever evolving and continuously morphing is all around us. From the Internet overall to micro blogging sites, new media allows on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content.

Upon initial thought of what new media I use on a daily basis my gut response is just Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Given more thought, it more of a small list including my iPhone, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube, Linkedin as the other main sites I use on a day-to-day basis.

Social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another. When you just wake up and open your eyes, you don’t have to walk outside to get the newspaper, just take your phone and scan the Internet or your newsfeed on Facebook. If you want to listen to music or see a music video just go to YouTube. Our friends on social media are increasingly becoming trusted sources of information through social media. I can’t recall how many times I was informed of something because a friend of mine posted it on Facebook.

Social media has not only influences how we meet and stay in touch with people, its influenced how we reveal ourselves. Before the goal with communication was to reveal very little, now the shift is to be more transparent with our thoughts and feelings, to reveal our humanness. Some using today’s social media communication tools as if it was their own personal diary, where some tend to share too much.

These social media communication tools and the constant sharing of information allow me to have access to so much content. This increased content allows me to take it all in and develop my own perspective on events of topic on social media sites.

However, with this inundation of content it is difficult to weed out what is credible from what is a hoax, scam, opinion, or just incorrect information.

I think social media has both positive and negative influences? For me it allows me to stay in touch with those I want to remain connected to despite not living close together. It keeps my up on what’s going on in the world to include breaking news events.

On the other hand the constant sharing of information tends to overwhelm me to where I tend to not want to engage or pay attention to the information scrolling across my screen. It some cases it forces me to disengage for periods of time.

It will be interesting and a little scary to see the evolution of new media and how our society communicates with each other.