So much of our lives are lived online, and so much of our news and information comes from social media, whether that is from legacy media sources or online influencers. It can be hard to know what to believe. In this article, Luca talks about the importance of fact-checking.
Like many of you reading this, I am an avid social media user, often clocking in many hours a week scrolling and scrolling. While this is most definitely unhealthy and I would NOT recommend it, it allows me access to a lot of stories and important news. However, even with the stories published by real-life news stations with that fancy blue tick next to them, I always get the feeling that I’m not getting the true scope of the entire situation they’re describing.
The comments of these posts aren’t much better either. A lot of it is just opposing sides arguing constantly about details that nobody will know the answer to unless they were witnessing that event. Which, in most cases, there aren’t many.
A lot of this stems from politics, and I feel that a part of the problem is that as the algorithms of these apps get to know your principles more, you will just get more content pushed to you which only aligns to those beliefs, preventing you from learning about alternatives.
This is where fact checking comes in.
Obviously, fact checking is important. Nobody can disagree with that. However, I feel that we underestimate how often we should actually be fact checking the things that we see, or just expect someone else to do it.
As mentioned before, people of opposing sides naturally argue. When they argue they may use statistical or factual evidence to back themselves up, but anyone who just casually scrolls through their thread will just take in what they say and not do anything else with it, often bystanding the ongoing argument.
But you don’t have to.
By taking the initiative to research an event of matter on your own allows you to get information from a variety of sources, and not just a few people on the internet. You may not reach a conclusive answer, but by also researching the political alignment of the news sources you look at, you can get a sense of what each side will know about the situation. That way, you can form your own judgement about the matter, and you can understand how people with different beliefs to you feel about it.
Luca
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