Credibility
How do we assess the quality of information we encounter online? What accountability or responsibility should we have over the integrity of the social justice content we decide to circulate? And, how prepared should we be to defend the claims we make to support our arguments around political issues? According to a recent survey conducted by the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics Network, 85 percent of high school aged youth want more help in learning to discern the credibility of the information they encounter online. For us, this issue is most powerfully raised by our case study of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, but it is also one which almost every public awareness effort confronts sooner or later.
Real World Example:
John Green’s “Crash Course” history lessons are comprehensive, holistic lessons on particular historical subjects created through effective and playful uses of media. John relies on a series of visual strategies from the typical historical paintings/photos but also use modern animations and graphs to supplement his verbal lessons. Additionally there are often playful uses of cinematic tricks and game show elements, such as the “Mystery Document”, in which John is playfully electrocuted if he doesn’t properly guess the author of said document. John’s language, speed of speech, and quick jumps across subjects all work to create a linguistic strategy that appeal to logic and give a sense of credibility to his historical lessons.
The investigations (and hasty conclusions) that unfolded on Reddit after the Boston Marathon bombings provide a case study of benefits and challenges faced by crowd-sourced news.
Ask Some Conversation Starter Questions.
Here are some questions you can ask to get a conversation about remix started in your community:
- What you see something in media (any media), how do you know if it's true of not?
- How do you judge credibility of a source online? What is your thought process?
- Is there such a thing as a fact?
- Have you ever been fooled? Did you initially believe something only to find out later that it wasn't true? How did you react?
- Or, did you ever assume something was false then later find out that it was actually genuine?
Take It to the Next Level.
If the HitRecord Credibility video and information contained here inspired you to action, you may want reach to the original call for submissions that inspired this video to be made in the first place. While the deadline for submissions has expired, you are always free to create your own responses to it!
