How validate information that we receive
March 12, 2019Nowadays, the high speed of technology development caused this mind that everything is possible. In the past if something was unbelievable for me it was much easier for me to put doubt on it, but today I can say by the same way. From opposite point of view, globally distribution of internet give this opportunity to everybody to generate and spread out everything that they like, it’s not matter this is true or not. Thus, how can I trust the information that I receive every minutes through different media?
Generally, people like to accept all of information that give them positive feeling and put question on the information that create negative feeling, but feeling is not a useful tool to measure the truth of information.
What should I do for myself to evaluate information? Mostly I divide information in 2 main groups; this information is influence my life (or I like to follow it) or not. This is my first filter. For information that I like to follow, I look at content of them, if is about a technology for instance; new app for my phone or an advance feature of car, I go a little deep on it and see what other say about it, what can be advantage and probably disadvantage of it, what is cost of it for myself, society and environment. Then, I have good picture of it from different angels and I can see this is a true story or not.
Another information group are about politics, economy, regulation, health, education and etc. which mostly are News! Every minutes we bombard by torrent of variety news about everything. How we can identify real from fake? First, we should confirm the resources which we receive information, if this is related to a new economy regulation we should check the references that connected to report like official government website, newspapers or announcement brochure. When the announcement is about new healthy device or method, I always check what authorized expert say about it.
For the most part of advertisement news, we see a lot of valid document and evidence that show this information is true, however, for some of them the validation is just for a part of it or they didn’t say complete story! I see so many of this type of news everyday through internet or other media. For example; New cream that relief your skin problem for ever and they show a lot of reliable research and expert acknowledgements about it, but they didn’t say this just working on certain skin type or this is just help a group of people in specific age. In this case, we should always to try to find the whole picture, we should read all part of information that announce by main source, by external certified expert and scholars.
Spending more time, searching for valid resources, go in depth of details, check the reliable references and see the complete story is just a first step of how we can assess information that we get from everywhere!