Separating Fact from Fiction

  WEEK SIX

This week we watched a  TED video "Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online" then we needed to answer the following questions:

1. What is the primary argument made in this video? What are some specific examples from the video of

journalists engaging in this activity? What are their methods? What Internet tools do they use?

The primary argument is regarding in how and where we get information and that we need to make sure is a credible source.  

One of the specific examples was an earth wake that happened in Costa Rica  where by one person posting something on twitter and in less than 60 sec people around the world could know about because the information travels fast. He was talking about the most of the information we can find for free almost immediately after something happen.

In the example from Costa Rica he mentioned that the person used twitter. Also he was talking about people posting so many pictures into Facebook.

2. As a researcher why is it important track down the original source, as well as, to document the all the

sources that you are using? According to the video what are some of the consequences of not doing so?

It is important to track down the original source because people post pictures and sometimes is overwhelming that we don’t know if it is credible or not.  He mentioned that computers don’t replace humans, for what I understand   is that now days with computers we can do so many things even Photoshop and we can create pics that appear to be real and that is why when searching the web web for our research we have to be very careful and know what to look for to make sure we don’t end up with websites or pictures created with the aid of computers to pretend there are real and keep on looking until find a credible source.

3. What are the roles of human sources/human interaction in collecting and publishing credible

information? How can Internet tools and human sources be used together for this purpose? Why is it

important to use both?

As humans, We need to investigate further and check for sources and credentials to make sure that what we are seen is not a makeup picture or video. If we are doing a research we want to make sure we have a valid statement by having a credible source. He focuses on searching for the truth. He showed videos and talked about the different steps he took to find out if the videos were real or not. In this case one of the videos where it was raining and the person taking the photo was shocked, he did a research and find out that it was real.  He used the interned to search from the user name on twitter, to look for the weather in the area where he concludes the video was taken from, he used the phone book to look for the address and finally looked at aerial pictures to compare the indicated house with the one on the video and finally he concluded that the video posted was real.

The second video he showed was about several men throwing an injured man into a river and talked about the steps he took to perform the investigation to find out if the video was real or not.

4. We are working through the literature review unit where you will locate multiple sources (primarily

scholarly sources) on your topic. How will the tools and methods presented in this video help you to

discern the credibility and relevance of sources? How do you plan to use both Internet tools and human

sources to collect the most credible sources on your semester topic?

The video was very helpful and a eye opener for me. I learned that while doing the reseach on my topic and find an article or video I would need to keep on researching that specific article or video for its credentials and make sure is not just a commentary of the journal  or a video made by a human and adding pictures or information that appears to be credible but is not.  I already have  with me and submitted the journals that I plan to use and now I will go back and research  where this journals came from and also a video that I used  about president Obama, I will research more to find out exactly who posted and see where this research take me to.