In these days, there are many new media issues exist such as credibility issues, brand identity issues, campaign issues and also security issues. Let's focus on the credibility issue which about the fact and fiction.
Nowadays, I think the credibility issues is quite a big issues in new media because it causes the users don't know what information to trust on. Although the users can try to verify the accuracy of the information from various types of media that they have but it doesn't mean that they will not get the wrong information again and again. As the media can link to another media platforms easily, so the wrong information might go across many of the media platforms.
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source: http://www.postano.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/content-people-01.jpg |
There are many user-generated contents that available in new media platforms such as blog, wikis, posts and many more. The content is basically written or generated by user, therefore the credibility is questionable. It is because they can write whatever things that they want. Not only the words that we can't trust on but also the photos or pictures.
For example, during the crisis of MH370, there are many pictures that posted online showed us that the plane was crash in somewhere else. Besides, there are also many fake news go around and try to influence the user's mindset. Some might said that the plane was actually crashed into the sea, some might said that the plane was shoot down by someone and many others versions.
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source: http://www.dzineblog360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/trust-but-verify-guest-posts.jpg |
For me, I think the best solution to solve this issue is to verify the news or information from traditional media such as newspaper. If the newspaper is also report about the news that we get to see on new media, then we may trust on it.
In short, I think that we should not trust everything online although online news is always the fastest news. We should enable the accuracy of news before we share it to others because we have the responsibility to stop sharing out wrong information.
Thank you.