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How To Find Reliable Information

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21 views2 pages

How To Find Reliable Information

Uploaded by

ilovemonet722
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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How Can We Find Reliable Information in the Age of Information Overload?

In today’s everyday life, it is not very difficult to get information. You just need to access the
internet and already you find more information than you’ll ever need. You just turn on the TV
and you find yourself the victim of a flood of information. Now-a-days, we can get such amount
of information that people 100 years ago could not have even dreamed of. We do not even need
to leave our seat to get information. We can say that we live in a very convenient society, but is
this really a good thing?
The answer to this question is a rather difficult one. On the one hand, as I stated above, this
makes our lives very convenient and easy. The Internet, for example, has really reduced the
amount of time and effort that we put into finding information. Many people are now also able
to access such information that they had no way to access in the past. But on the other hand we
can also say that this has made people lazy and irresponsible. Getting information has become
so easy, that people do not care anymore to make sure whether the information they have is
actually reliable or not. People also do not question the information they receive through TV,
and that creates massive misunderstandings. This flood of information has created a society
where we can no longer trust the information that surrounds us. I do not condemn this ‘over
flooded’ society, but I do say that we need to be more careful with the information that comes
our way, and be more responsible as to what information we deem reliable. But how do we do
that? How do we find reliable information?
There are several ways in which this can be achieved. Here I would like to talk about what I
think is important to do when looking for information.
One of the most important things to do is to use more than one source. Especially when using
the Internet, it is important to look at more than one source. If you are only using one source,
there is the possibility that it contains mistakes, be it intentional or not. But if you compare it
with another source, then you may notice these mistakes, and using a third, or even a fourth,
source you can judge what is the right information and what is wrong.
Another important step is getting information published by reliable sources, such as
governmental institutes, academic institutes (universities, research facilities, and so on), non-
profit organizations, as well as individuals such as academic scholars, and if you are looking for
information about a particular person, information distributed by that person. It does not mean
that the information you will get from these sources will be always true, but information gained
from such sources would be more reliable.
For example, if you are looking for information on the British author Jane Austen, and you
want to use the internet, then one of the first websites that you will find is Wikipedia. But
Wikipedia is not reliable, for you cannot know who wrote it, and how reliable the sources they

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used are. So you need to find another source other than Wikipedia. The next website you may
find is janeausten.org, which is a website run by a non-profit organization, so we can rely on the
information there to be more reliable. Similarily, you need to be careful as to who wrote the
information you have found.
One more thing that one needs to be careful about when handling information is to know the
purpose for which the information was written, and for what audience it was meant. If, for
example, the information was written in the purpose of selling something, than there is a large
possibility that the information contains false facts. But if the information was written as part of
an academic research, then we can be more confident that the information is true. Also,
information written as part of a hobby would be less reliable than information written as part of
a serious research. When reading a book, it is also important to note whether the work is of
fiction or non-fiction.
There are more ways to find reliable information, but these are, to me, the most important
ones. In this society of information overload, it is important to always be alert to the possibility
that the information we receive may be false. We need to take responsibility not only of the
information we distribute, but also of the information we receive. We need to stop being lazy
and make the effort to find reliable information. We must not be content and let the flood drown
us, but we must build an embankment and contain the flood.

Source
Tutorial: How Can I Tell If a Website is Reliable by Emma Wood Carlson
Lee College Library
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/petrosino/Legacy_Cycle/mf_jm/Challenge%201/website
%20reliable.pdf

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