DIGITAL SMART

IB students rely heavily on the internet when doing research for their IA’s, Extended Essays and TOK. There is a gamut of options before them - innumerable sites with news, articles, data and photos. And a gamut of pitfalls.

As a librarian, I have seen the brightest students falter when it comes to research, relying heavily on sources or statements that have no credibility, evidence or are ‘alternative’ in nature! Many students are unable to detect fake sites from real ones. This lack of digital media literacy makes young people vulnerable to getting misled which can have academic as well as real world consequences.

But there is help. There are numerous wikis and sites that provide scaffolds or checklists to help students develop ‘discernment’. Organizations like Callido Learning also provide IB specific resources to help students improve their critical thinking and research skills.

To get started however, here are 5 quick tips to help students think critically about information found online.

Is it legit? How can you tell?

1.     What is the source? While gathering information for research online for example from Wikipedia it is best to use the External links given at the bottom of the page rather than blindly accepting what is written. Verify the research by looking it up on other sites. If the same information is found on multiple sites with no changes in content, then you’re on the right track. Another way is to check the domain name. Well-known organizations customarily own their domains and have a standard look and feel. But sites with non-standard domain names (for example: https://abcnews.com.co/) should raise alarm and flag to you that you need to look around for more information to see if they can be trusted. For example, abcnews.com is a legitimate news source, but abcnews.com.co is not, despite its similar appearance.

2.      Who is the author? To be on the safe side it’s best to check about the author of an article, story or research. Before making use of the same in your research or project look at the writers’ bio by doing a Google search. This would help you determine if the given information is by the author or not, thereby protecting you from plagiarism. Always double check the author of the information.

3.      What’s the support? Many times, fake information comes from official — or official-sounding — sources. But one only needs to take a deeper look into it, the source will be unable to back up the claim. For example, the link below shows a photograph of strange looking flowers, posted on the image hosting site Imgur by a user named "pleasegoogleShakerAamerpleasegoogleDavidKelly". The caption read "Fukushima Nuclear Flowers: Not much more to say, this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects". Fukushima Nuclear Flowers. There is no strong evidence to prove that the flowers have defects due to effects of radiation. If one digs deeper into the reliability of this photo there are articles that refute the validity of the claim.

4.      When was it published? Where was it published? Look for the date and place of publication. When doing research about a topic, its best to be sure about these two facts. When an information has different dates and place of publication across different websites then it leaves no doubt that it is fabricated. A genuine research article or information source will have the date and place of publication, also the name of the organisation publishing the information.

5.     Reverse image search: If you want to determine the authenticity of an image you can do so by ‘reverse searching’ for the image on Google. Right-click on the image and choose to search Google for it. If the image appears in a lot of sites and in varied topics, then it's not actually an image of what it says it was on the first story – it was most likely taken from an online repository of photos like Shutterstock.