Digital Responsibility

Growing up, the news sources we had were pretty limited: a few channels, a handful of newspapers, and that was about it.  Yet the Information Age has given all of us a seemingly endless amount of sources literally at our fingertips, yet not all of that is going to be accurate.  Especially in the age of “alternate facts”, we need to learn how to gauge credibility, verify what they’re reading and look at evidence.  This is a major step to understanding various perspectives and viewpoints so that people can make informed decisions as opposed to shouting in an echo chamber.  I recently came across an article that shared strategies to support this “digital responsibility”.  While these are meant for students, they translate to people of all ages.  Here are four tips they offered:

Share information from various perspectives: Don’t just read information from news sources that match your political views.  Look across the spectrum to give you several different perspectives.  For example, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker Slate are going to approach the same story vastly differently.  You can also try Blue Feed, Red Feed, which lets you see varying political perspectives side by side.  

Verify sources: If you post information, you want to confirm the source.  Only share stories with a source that can be verified.  No matter how credible a story may seem, if it’s sourceless or that source can’t be verified, then you’re probably just spreading misinformation.  

Show evidence and facts: People on social media want to make sense of what they’re reading, especially when most of what they’re reading is directly contradictory.  People sometimes unwittingly share information that’s inaccurate or takes something completely out of context.  If somebody does that, don’t attack them for being stupid, but respond with constructive evidence and facts to start an intelligent discourse.  

Attack ideas, not people: “Ad hominem” arguments, which attack the person rather than their views, aren’t constructive and won’t get any sort of point across.  If somebody shared something that’s misleading or untrue, even if they themselves are completely nuts, hypocritical or just plain ignorant, don’t tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about.  That’s not going to move relationships or understanding forward, and will most likely just make them angrier and less likely to listen to you.  Rather, figure out their intent and if there’s a flaw, share verified evidence to the contrary.