Fact and fiction online

     

    Today, I would like to focus on a very interesting video based on the website TED – Ideas worth spreading.                   

    Markham Nolan is a journalist and in one of his speeches he talks about fact and fiction online. It is a very interesting and fascinating video about the way to find the original source of the information posted online.  Markham Nolan in his investigation used two videos uploaded onto YouTube to find the original source and identify if it is true or fiction. YouTube became a very powerful website, on which users can upload, view or share videos. As well, it is a very helpful source for top news and crimes evidence all over the world. For journalists, there is a big amount of information, tools and tactics that can help to find the truth about top news or events. 

   

    This talk helps me to understand the power of the virtual world. Nolan gives examples of messages spread to the world about the earthquake in Managua. The first comment posted on Twitter about the earthquake took only 30 seconds to be spread all over the world, when the physical effects of earthquake take 60 second to travel. It is amazing that every second there was 58 photos uploaded on instagram and about 3,500 on to facebook.

    Personally, I have watched a variety of videos or photos uploaded online and I have questioned myself if they are real. These days with growing technology internet can also be very dangerous place with a huge amount of fake information, videos, photos, tweets etc.  It is hard to filter everything we are looking for online and be able to identify and recognise it. We have to protect ourselves from viruses, malware or fake websites by using them intelligently and safely.