Can You Trust The Information You Find Online?
By: Andrea Flint
The internet is currently estimated to consist of around 100 billion pages, with articles and information on absolutely any subject you care to mention. Advanced search technology such as that used by Google and Ask make it easy to find a site or article covering a topic you wish to research, whether it's historical data, medical information, recipes or even just fun stuff like jokes. But can you trust what you read online, and how far should you use the internet as a research tool?
One of the strengths of the internet is that it gives a voice to anyone with access, and through forums and other kinds of site anyone can make their opinion heard. This democratic aspect is also unfortunately one of the web's drawbacks as well, as there are few things to stop anyone publishing information which is inaccurate, outdated, or even flat out deceptive.
For this reason, it's best to take much of what you read online with a pinch of salt. Opinionated people can make a lot of noise, but it's not always those that shout loudest who are the most correct.
Even well respected sites such as Wikipedia need to be treated with a little caution when researching a topic. Owing to the fact that virtually anyone can edit or add a topic, the information found on it isn't necessarily well researched or corroborated, although many fine entries do exist. Wikipedia relies on collaboration to weed out inaccuracy, and while in some categories this works well, in the fiercely commercial areas the provision of accurate information is not necessarily the writer's primary motive for contributing to the site. Conversely, in topics with extreme minority interest, the collaborative aspect can fall apart: there aren't enough readers of a topic to pull it into shape and check the facts.
Add to this the fact that there are millions of commercial sites out there which, while maybe offering good information on their business category, are almost inevitably going to show some sort of bias towards their own company or services rather than being truly impartial.
So, back to the original question: can you trust what you read? So far the answer would appear to be no, but that's not the case. So long as you research a subject properly and read a range of views on a range of sites, you can probably come to a good understanding of a subject with few or no errors or inaccuracies. You just need to remember that publishing a web page doesn't always entail the same level of rigorous fact checking and comprehensive research as traditional journalism aspires to, and the fact that something can be read online doesn't always mean it's true.
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