Oh say what is truth and who says it is truth?

For this journal post I read the following articles:

•  Wittenberg, K. (2007). Credibility of content and the future of research, learning, and publishing in the digital environment. The Journal of Electornic Publishing, 10(1). Available http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;cc=jep;rgn=main;view=text;idno=3336451.0010.101  
•  Yardi, S., Romero, D., Schoenebeck, G. & danah boyd. (2010). Detecting spam in a Twitter network, First Monday, 15(1), 4 January. Available http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2793/2431
•  Garfinkel, S. (2008). Wikipedia and the meaning of truth. Technology Review, 111(6), 84-86.

 This articles all link to the idea that false and misleading information can infiltrate any network no matter what kind of network it is. Whether it be an academic network which publishes a peer-reviewed journal, an on-line community encyclopedia or a social network populated with trusted friends and professional colleagues.

Which brings me to think about the phrase "Oh say what is truth" and then to add who says it is truth? The problem with today's interlinked society is that the veracity of information is subjective. It depends upon the context of which the information sort for is retrieved, the experience of the retriever and that of the author of information. Depending on the experience and the reputation of the author the reader will take accuracy of the reported information for granted. However, even authors can make mistakes and these published mistakes can take on a life of their own.

That is why I say that to learn about information literacy and practice it can be one of the biggest gifts we as a society can give to our citizens. To be taught to sift information for oneself, to verify it before trusting it will hopefully make us wiser to the uninformed  and junk news grabs of the networked world. To be able to critically think and exercise one's free choice without having to follow the crowd. Is still just as important today as it was in Galileo's day.  As a famous saying goes "you can't believe everything that's in print" is still true even if it is on a computer tablet instead of in a newspaper.

Reading these articles made me aware that miss-information can leach into any network. So being taught information literacy skills and passing these skills on to my future clients; will hopefully make me a better information professional than I am now and benefit  my customers.