Social media, lies, and more lies

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” 
Mark Twain*

Can you determine the difference between a truth and a lie on social media? This crucial skill could potentially affect your health, your checkbook, and almost certainly your social life.

Below are a few tips for weeding through the morass of "facts" on social media (and online).

1.  Learn how to accurately evaluate information
(both in print and online). 

                                           "The problem with internet quotes is that you can't always depend on their accuracy"
is something Abraham Lincoln never said.

Common things to look for include authority, currency, relevancy, accuracy, and purpose.
Be aware, however, that these factors can vary depending on the context of the information.  "Currency" for a medical journal is not the same thing as currency for literary criticism, or for a movie review.   Resist the urge to share a mind-boggling "fact" you've found on social media until you can verify it. Otherwise, you'll just be spreading misinformation.


2.  Don't be afraid to ask for help.

Photo taken by Milton H. Greene (now in public domain); obtained through
Wikimedia Commons. Text added via Pinwords.com by Yvonne Mulhern.

Did you know that there are people out there with advanced degrees in information organization and related fields, who specialize in helping people find accurate, relevant sources both in print and online?
They're called librarians.  And they really want to help you.
No joke. 

In the meantime, here are two quick tips for when you're not sure about the veracity of your online sources.

Tip 1:  Perhaps you're not sure if that latest email from a relative warning about what sounds like an urban legend is for real.  A quick check at snopes.com may help.
 Tip 2: Tired of plowing through pages of questionable results for an academic assignment?
An easy way to cut out extraneous sources from your Google search is to insert site:.gov or site:.edu next to your search words.  This limits your results to government or education (college and university) websites, respectively.  Is every web page that ends in .edu or .gov necessarily relevant or helpful to your search?  No, but this does cut out a lot of chaff.  It also makes looking for information on potential health problems less horrifying. Better yet, confine Googling your health symptoms to recommended sites.



3.  Verify, verify, verify.

Screenshot of tweet from the Associated Press.

Hint: Googling does not always help with verifying. 

For example, the quotation falsely attributed to Marilyn Monroe (above) pulls up over 130,000 results online.  To verify a quote, your best bet is to find a book of quotations put out by a reliable publisher. In April of 2014 the Associated Press Twitter account was hacked and this message was tweeted to several million followers: "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." Less than a minute later, the Dow Jones took a dive of over 150 points (but recovered several minutes later, as news of the hoax spread).


If you see people tweeting about a celebrity death, an easy way to check this is to type the celebrity's full name into Google for confirmation. Look for results from well-known newspaper websites (instead of blogs or other forms of social media).

The above are just a few suggestions to get you started on the road to becoming a more critical information consumer.  The saying "don't believe everything that you read" is still as true as ever--maybe even more so.



Note: Mark Twain may not have actually said this.

References:

Galvin, Joe. "A Year In Debunks: Separating Social Media Fact From Social Media Fiction." Storyful blog.      http://blog.storyful.com/2013/12/16/a-year-in-debunks-separating-social-media-fact-from-social-media-fiction/#.U-4jAk1OW75 

Shapiro, Fred.  "Quotes Uncovered--How Lies Travel."  Freakonomics blog.
      http://freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/

"AP Twitter feed hacked; no attack at White House." USA Today.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/04/23/obama-carney-associated-press-hack-white-house/2106757/

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Yvonne is a TSMRI co-director and librarian who likes old movies and new media.