Social Media & Truth:

How do I know what I know? Name one new thing you learned using a social media site today and explain why you believe it is true. What source did you use to acquire this information? At times, are social media sites reliable for obtaining credible information?

            A lot of my learning I have acquired in previous schooling along with gaining new knowledge from current online courses, I have resorted to the Internet to learn a lot of what I know today. As reliable and unreliable the Internet may be, I feel I don’t go a day without learning something new from the Internet everyday. Everyday the Internet continues to educate its users around the world and I am proud to say the Internet has taught me so much. From headline news, scholastic studies, products, celebrities, businesses/companies, our peers and branching out many other topics, the internet offers a wide range of information that society can learn from today. A lot of what I learn from the internet comes from verifying what is being learned by resorting to many sources on the Internet, I don’t think one can gain much knowledge from reading one topic without backing up that first source of information from other resources, the Internet is based upon researching, and if you don’t research what your read, you may step away from the computer gaining information not knowing if it is credible or not. Without the Internet I know for sure I wouldn’t know a lot of the things I know now, but this acquiring of information wouldn’t have came to me without doing the research, relying on multiple sources. With that being said, I can say I do trust and rely on the Internet on a daily basis.

            While browsing the Internet today, logging into one of the world’s most popular social media network “Facebook” I came across a pretty interesting breaking news headline article that caught my attention, dealing with the ISIS terrorist group, this group has beheaded yet another person, this time a British captive.  I have been following the updates on ISIS for the past month or so, but before acknowledging this information as credible I researched through other resources.  Even though Facebook broadcasts a wide range of fabricated news and information it also delivers a vast amount of credible information, but before accepting this piece of information on Facebook as credible, I research through other sources to confirm that this information is trustworthy such as CNN.com, NBCnews.com and other major news network websites. When reading information on Facebook I tend to do this often to back up what I learn on this social media site so I don’t go around spreading/sharing false information throughout social media communities or to others in the real world. With backing up what I read on Facebook I do consider this social media network to be reliable for obtaining credible information, only if I research the facts to verify what I read as credible.