Today, information is physically all around us. It is above our heads on billboards, by our feet on fallen posters, next to our shoulders on a bus stop flyer, and digitally, at the tips of our fingers. As media grows, we are presented with a surplus of messages every day and are bombarded in our physical and digital surroundings. In many ways, we’ve grown numb to it all: Is Instagram Killing Your Attention Span? Experts Say That Doing These Ten Things Can Raise Joy. X Political Figure Says… and the list goes on. We are overloaded with information. The result is often that we ignore these messages, discredit them, or don’t even notice. But what happens when one of these messages do catch our eye? How do we respond?
Verified, a how-to guide on wisely navigating online messaging, teaches people how to root out unreliable sources. The authors Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg break down myths, offer real life examples, and set the standard for finding reliable information online. In many ways, their book offers fast and easy methods for smart internet practices.
Committing to the Search
Before something catches our eye, before we hit the search bar or the share button, the first step starts with acknowledging unhealthy internet practices. The authors acknowledge several of these habits, the first being a lack of effort. They say this about the choice between digging deeper on a subject and stopping at the original source: “What’s stopping the student from finding out more? It’s a simple act of opening another tab and starting the search. Still, for some students, the gap between thought and action proves to be too large” (Caulfield & Wineburg, p.13). So, part of the problem is commitment to the search. What is wanted to be an easy search often needs to be a little longer of a review. This is partly due to internet burn out. People are bombarded with so many massages, that diving deeper into the information pool is overwhelming.
In addition, many people who have been on the internet for a while have a preference on how they do their research and how long they want it to take. It all comes down to effort and routine. What Verified offers is a new way of fact checking, and why fact checking the facts is important. It is a great way to have online awareness, but only if we can exert the effort to implement something new.
Knowing when to give your attention and effort
Being internet-smart means effort, and you can judge when to give that effort. A low risk article (ie. How To Bake an Apple Pie) doesn’t necessarily need a lot of effort to verify, however, hot topic/high risk articles (ie. US to Adopt New Amendment) need a higher level of attention and effort. In addition, online awareness needs to consist of a healthy amount of skepticism and curiosity. If we completely write off a potentially valuable piece of information because we’ve become numb and skeptical to the influx of messaging we receive, then we’ve cheated ourselves the opportunity of learning. Having online awareness doesn’t have to mean fact checking everything, it just means having the discernment to know when a longer search is needed, to care enough to search, and knowing how to accurately perform that search. Do not let the influx of messages overwhelm you. At the end of the day, we are in control of the information we choose to believe.
Want to learn more about online awareness? Read Verified:
Caulfield, M., & Wineburg, S. (2023). Verified. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS.
Comments
2 responses to “First Steps to Online Research”
I enjoyed your introductory paragraph because it narrows your focus down to the messages that we notice while still acknowledging how widespread these messages are. I think that you are right about fact checking coming down to commitment and effort. I know in my own life if I saw something that was, as you said which I also liked, low-risk then I would be a lot more likely to take it at face value. It doesn’t really matter if it is true or not. It is kind of like content, it is more there for the value of being there than for the value of being true. However, if I saw something that had to do with an important figure or someone in my own life, then it would be very important to me to know what the truth is and why I believe that’s the truth. I would commit to figuring it out no matter what the effort cost was. One word you used that I found valuable was discernment. Oftentimes, if you feel like you are being lied to, you are. You are right, having the awareness to acknowledge that and the care to prove/disprove the message is key.
We really have become numb to the internet. I’ve been on a binge of looking at old websites, blogs, and so on. Even looking at how people are trying to bring the positives that era had (Neocities is really cool). Your point that Verified’s information is extremely useful, but only so far as we make it. To make it useful, what we must do is build a habit (a task much more easily said than done). You are also correct in that we must exercise a healthy amount of skepticism. If we are too skeptical we run the risk of truth skepticism.