City Brights: Howard Rheingold : Crap Detection 101 - The Diigo Meta page

• 21 Dec 09
  

  Suzanne Neuman

  website evaluation

• 20 Dec 09
  

  Regis Barondeau

  crap informationoverload rheingold filter health

  • "Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him."
  • Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet.
  • 12 more annotations...
  • • You have to do some investigation before you accept anything you find online
    • Who is the author?" is the root question
    • use easywhois.com
    • Does the author provide sources for factual claims, and what happens when you search on the names of the authors of those sources?
    • See if the source has been bookmarked on a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo
    • A good question to ask yourself, particularly when a website asks you to download something to your own computer, is "might somebody be trying to put one over on me?"
    • don't trust just one source. Triangulate.
    • we're in the age of "publish, then filter."
    • crowdsourced filter
    • checking the history of past tweets
    • When it comes to medical information, just as when it comes to information that affects political liberty, believing or forwarding badinfo can be unhealthy or fatal.
    • the one cost-effective measure that the participative have in their contest with central control is know-how
• 

  Will Richardson

  "At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming."
  
  
  Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. The good stuff is out there if you know how to find and verify it. Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet.
  
  
  The first thing we all need to know about information online is how to detect crap, a technical term I use for information tainted by ignorance, inept communication, or deliberate deception. "

  information_literacy literacy network_literacy parent_book

• 

  deb kitchener

  rheingold literacy information socialmedia internet

  • Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before
  • a technical term I use for information tainted by ignorance, inept communication, or deliberate deception. Learning to be a critical consumer of Webinfo is not rocket science.
  • 2 more annotations...
  • • we all need to know about information online is how to detect crap,
    • Who is the author?" is the root question.
• 06 Nov 09
  

  Maggie Verster

  information literacy education

• 04 Nov 09
  

  Diane Cox

  article internet info plausibility checking facts sources

• 

  Nicola McNee

  Excellent post on tools to evaluate websites

  information literacy

  • deliberate deception
  • inept communication
  • 20 more annotations...
  • • information tainted by ignorance
    • "You have to do some investigation before you accept anything you find online,"
    • "Who is the author?"
    • easywhois.com
    • If the author provides a way to ask questions, communicate, or add comments,
    • Who are these other people whose opinions you are trusting? Is the site a .gov
      or .edu?
    • Take the website's design into account - professional design should not be seen
      as a certain indicator of accurate content,
    • Does the author provide sources for factual claims, and what happens when you
      search on the names of the authors of those sources? Have others linked to this
      page, and if so, who are they (use the search term "link: http://..." and Google
      shows you every link to a specified page).
    • See if the source has been bookmarked on a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo;
    • bias
    • A good question to ask yourself, particularly when a website asks you to
      download something to your own computer, is "might somebody be trying to put one
      over on me?"
      
    • authority
    • I would add credibility points if a source is a verified professor at a known
      institution of higher learning,
    • Triangulate.
      
    • try to find three different ways to test a source's credibility.
    • Know how to use online filters
    • Just as thinking like a detective is a strategy for trying to determine the
      credibility of webinfo, thinking like an intelligence analyst is a strategy for
      trying to gauge the credibility of online reports about breaking news events.
    • The biases of trusted sources like newspapers and television need to be examined
      critically
    • understanding the vocabulary of visual deception
    • How much work is it to check three links before believing or passing along
      health information you find online?
• 16 Oct 09
  

  mikecaulfield

  In my mind, this is the most important -- or at least the most immediately pressing -- literacy.

  tech-fluency literacy rheingold crap-detection HowardRheingold

  • Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. The good stuff is out there if you know how to find and verify it. Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet.
• 10 Sep 09
  

  Doug Peterson

  Crap Detection 101
  "Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him."

  HowardRheingold information literacy

• 09 Jul 09
  

  kim tufts

  website evaluation technology education

• 01 Jul 09
  

  Settlement AtWork

  The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part - the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming."

  info_overload web_monitoring newscasting

• 

  Tania Sheko

  Howard Rheingold's blog post 'Crap Detection 101' about how you have to be discerning about the information you read. Interesting examples : Twitter's covering of the Iran election 09

  crap discernment knowledge information critical Howard Rheingold howardrheingold detection

• 30 Jun 09
  

  Natalie Lafferty

  Blog post by Howard Rheingold on how to filter the rubbish on the web

  HowardRheingold informationliteracy

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