The Humanist Cafe
Wednesday, December 2, 7 - 8:30 pm
James Bay New Horizons
234 Menzies Street, James Bay
Topic: Where did you get THAT information? – How to recognize and avoid unreliable media information
Presenter: John Pope, MLIS
There has been an expolsion of stored information since the dawn of the digital age more than 30 years ago [https://en.wikiquote.org/
Humankind’s ability to prosper and be healthy has been given a big boost because we are now able to process and combine the collective information from vastly different subject disciplines to get a more accurate and complete understanding of our species and the cosmos.
Internet search engines allow us to search massive digital libraries of just about everything, most of which is still available almost free of charge. Libraries around the globe have had to rapidly adapt to the demands of the digital information age.
Information collection has expanded exponentially, and continues to expand. Some of us remember when Bill Gates said “No one will need more than 637 kB of memory for a personal computer”. How things have changed.
Today, a Google search for news information brings up many pages of links to choose from. Some of these links bring us to information that is accurate, and based on solid reporting, some do not, and some sources try to use false information for profit or fame.
As the pool of information sources continues to grow, and we know unscrupulous or opportunistic people, businesses and governments will publish biased and inaccurate information, we need ways to determine which sources are reliable.
I will present some ideas and suggestions about this, and discussion will follow. Please bring your interesting media stories.
Links
A history of The Information Age:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/
How to identify reliable sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Our personal biases reflect how we judge media information:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/
Poll on US trust of the media (2011):
http://www.gallup.com/poll/
Media bias in the USA with an informative list of types of media bias:
https://www.studentnewsdaily.
Media manipulation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
See you there! Bring a reliable friend.