Ted asks us the question “what do new forms of information gathering and dissemination such as citizen journalism mean for new media audiences, and the practices of traditional news media?”
Rule #1 of the internet should be “You should not believe the crap you read on the internet; however convincing it is”
Perfect example: I was in a Politcs tutorial and it was our last lesson so our tutor said we could ask her anything. One guy put is hands up and asked her opinion the alternate theory on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He said he’d read a conspiracy theory online that had said that 9/11 was a fake, that the World Trade Center would take too much to repair and so the attacks were to claim insurance. He also stated the theory had said that the American Government (more Bush than anyone else) was chummy with the Bin Laden family and therefore had planned the whole thing.
The same sentiment had been displayed in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11, where he questioned why the Bin Laden family had been flown out of the USA just after the attacks happened, and why had Bush done nothing when he heard about the attacks.
You should have seen our tutor’s face. She was very gracious (she could have bit his head off) but she simply stated that the theories were exactly that, theories.
The students argument was that they were rather convincing. I couldn’t help but cringe as an academic who had probably spent most of her life studying politics and media was being questioned by a second year student.
But my story shows that people will believe anything, and while the internet is a powerful tool for getting the truth out there, it’s also just as powerful for getting bullcrap out, too.
There’s heaps out there, I did a Google search “September 11 was a fake” and got about 97,100,000 results, here’s one of them: http://bit.ly/deCrgL
Sometimes the irony or joke is lost on the user, and is used out of context.
Speaking as a journalism major, I feel I’m on a great position to be able to report the truth. You no longer have to pay your dues getting coffee for the editor before your story gets published. All one has to do is create a blog, or a free peer reviewed citizen journalist site and it’s up.
Of course, one good thing about major news outlets is that they don't usually print useless information (I said usually) and avoids kicking up too much of a fuss (less revolutions you see).
Is the internet a modern example of the Christian Bible? Years of reads, interpretations and rereads has created an entire religion that millions live and die by; the same affect could be said for the internet, many swear by what they read on the Internet too, but I don’t want to get into a religion discussion.
My personal advice is we have to take everything we see on the internet with a grain of salt, especially Wikipedia. Although, I heard the university was thinking of permitting Wikipedia as a verified source?
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