Generate Ideas on How to improve people’s critical thinking to know what information are True and what are not…

March 13, 2019

By semadea

In the current information and technology era, people are facing unprecedented challenge on how to scrutinize information which are being released especially through internet. As social medias are becoming easily accessible to people with internet access and also acting as a major channel to transmit information across the globe, this is leaving the majority; accessing these social medias to be vulnerable & be affected by the information. information being released is instant, vast, appealing to view but might not all the time be intended to transmit truth and originality. these natures of the information are becoming the most challenge to people across the globe to have a hard time in distinguishing which are true information intended to create awareness and which are not; just being posted to mislead oneself.

The theme proposed as a challenge for the idea generation “how to improve peoples ability to think critically…” paved the way to the idea that I proposed with regard to the challenge we have been submitted.

The method that I used when working with the idea generation is called “Problem Based Innovation”. According to the explanation by Peter Magnusson, in the idea generation process, when the problem comes first; in our case “the challenge how to identify if information are fake or true” followed by the solution to this problem; the idea generated <AWARENESS CREATION>.

People (those who are releasing information) through internet; nowadays; are not always with an intention of spreading good news; not to discredit those who come up with true, credible and verifiable information.

when people come up with new ideas; as explained by Amabile, Teresa; they may be motivated by extrinsic motivation in the sense of getting recognition; in our case; their intention might be getting too many viewers of the video; not noticing perhaps ignoring the effect of the information they are spreading out; specially when it is a fake one. Here is where the big problem lies; when people are motivated by extrinsic motivations; they may be less creative and at the same time the ideas they spread might have a devastating effect on the Sociopolitical relation of any given society.

The theme chosen is so interesting and motivating in a sense that I myself have ended up being challenged in having difficulties scrutinizing which information are really true and which are not. the problem even magnifies when others also post discrediting the first information that I saw was not true and they try to provide their version and this leaves one to be on an intersection but don’t know which way to go.

The problems mentioned above trigger an urgent need for an idea to be generated which are intended not only inform and enable society to be critical thinkers when it comes to evaluating information but also to discourage and most importantly take measures on false information providers.

Those responsible bodies in each country; government and societal institutions and international organisations as well; need to work hand-in-hand and put their maximum effort to mitigate this challenge which other wise is leaving a scar in all corners of the globe. So the idea is to create awareness among societies at all ages; as the majority of societies specially youngsters are becoming dependent in getting their information through internet specially social medias. Critical thinking through awareness creation will have an advantage for one :- to deeply engage in reasoning & rationalizing over the information instead of over looking & rushing to judgement; to see/verify the information from different angels ; verify the source of the information.