This week I read an interesting article on how to evaluate credible resources. Next, I chose an online news article and tried to determine if I thought the information was credible based on the sources the author provided. This was a little trickier than I first thought it would be.

I chose an article from The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) called What Can You Believe About 'Obamacare'? by Linda Bergthold. This article discusses multiple myths about the new health care and rather they are valid. Berthold (2013) discusses sources in her article and mentions how important it is to check out information for yourself. She wrote her article using hyperlinks so it allowed you to verify anything in her work that you may be questioning. As I followed these sources I found relevant information. The first link was to the Department of Labor website which discussed all about the Affordable Care Act. It seemed to be a decent, reliable source. All of her links took me to places that I could find where she retrieved her information from so that I could evaluate it for myself. The only link I saw a problem with was the link to "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because it took me to a Wikipedia site. I know from previous experience with Wikipedia that although it can be helpful it may not be accurate. Anybody can post on Wikipedia about anything, I would have preferred a more credible source for the information regarding this subject. Overall, her article was full of useful information with credible sources to back her up (2012).

In the article that I read, Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources, there are certain guidelines to follow to verify the accuracy of a website or a source. If we follow such guidelines we will be able to verify the accuracy of the source better than before. The article that I used was a good example of accurate & inaccurate sources according to this article. The guidelines include matters such as: contact information, up to date information, author biased, what kind of website is the information appearing on, and complete list of works cited page; just to name a few. Based on these guidelines, The Huffington Post article meets some positive criteria for accurate sourcing. For instance, according to the articles guidelines the information is reliable based on contact information and current information. The author has her contact information on the page and the information in her article is relevant and current. Almost every phrase and term was linked to a website that has credibility and is kept up to date. This is allowing us researching to be aware that the information is current. Also, the author doesn't appear to be biased at all. There are myths stated and some are agreed with and some are not but either way anything that is posted has a website or information to back it up. All and all this article seems reliable as does the author that wrote it. It is probably safe to assume that not all articles are going to meet all guidelines but this article did meet important ones.

There are so many different websites which is why it can be difficult to identify accurate information and sourcing. According to the article about evaluating criteria, there are different kinds of web sites such as: professional, homepage, and news. Knowing what kind of web site you are on can help you to identify what kind of information you are receiving (http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm). The main problem with web sites is that anybody can post information. Previously I mentioned that my author linked information to a Wikipedia site. This site cannot truly be trusted because anybody can post on it. I went to nursing school with a girl who posted that she was a rock star and it stayed on wikipedia for over a year. This is a perfect example of how allowing anybody to post online can lead to false information. The Wikipedia site Linda Bergthold choose did seem to have very accurate information but because of the site it is on it is still questionable. I feel that through mass media unrestricted web publishing will continue to cause inaccurate and non-trustworthy information. If there is not going to be a restriction on who can post information than there could potentially always be false information. The only way to have mass media progress more towards accurate information is to restrict who can post about specific subject matters. If you do not meet the requirements than you can not post. The resource article for class clearly discusses the different web sites, different domain names, etc. Certain domains when I was in school were safe to use such as .edu and .gov. Now they are not because the web site is not restricted and anybody can post. If we would prevent false information from going on web sites than we could identify more easily the accurate and current information. Until we do something to prevent the false information nobody will be able to truly identify fact from fiction. Mass media will continue to be populated with false information if something does not prevent anything from being posted. In my opinion, this is where the issue lies.

Resources:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm

Bergthold, L. (2013). What Can You Believe About 'Obamacare'?
http: www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-bergthold/what-can-you-believe-abou_b_4082121.html