Information Literacy Millennial Spokesman

Tags

Information Literacy, Information Literacy Awareness Month, Website Evaluation

Just because someone says something about themselves and get it published doesn’t mean that it’s true. It’s easy to hear that there are people online who aren’t who they say they are. Here’s on story of man who has made a fortune, partly by pretending to be younger than he is and part of a generation who could easily be his children. Then he hops into articles by willing to be a secondary source on any idea a journalist wants to promote, just so they promote him, too!

An Online Fake

“Millennial Dan Nainan Left Intel To Make His Millions Entertaining Others With Comedy” ran the article in Forbes in 2017. In this profile and several others he claims to be 35. Ben Collins, a Daily Beast reporter, tracked down the details of his life. Combining official records with his given timeline makes his story of his life makes no sense. A record of speeding ticket he got in 1987 would have been when he was 6 years old. He would have been a senior engineer at Intel as a 17 year old in 1998. He seems to be trying to be 35 longer than Jack Benny was 39.

Double Check Your Facts

As Collins points out in his article (linked above), Nainan has been referenced as being 35 and a part of the Millennial generation over and over in mainstream publications. He’s been listed as 31 and 35 in the same year. He’s been listed as 35 in different years. Public records including his birth record and an old traffic ticket show he is isn’t. Publications, readily available on the web, have done stories before this. He is 57.

So when you are working on a paper, don’t necessarily trust the first source you come to. Don’t trust a source that makes it too easy to “prove” what you want. Double check you can find more than one source that says the same thing. It really doesn’t matter much what age Nainan is. However, there are lot of things in both academia (what really caused the Civil War) and real life (is that really the best deal on a refrigerator) that you will find people trying to deceive you about. Double check before you put something out there.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Information Literacy Spotting a Fake

Tags

Fake News, Information Literacy, Website Evaluation

ACCCCKKKKKK!

So you’re confronted with a news story set to throw you into a panic:

http://www.breakingnews365.net/59b724b910438/world-s-most-popular-candy-to-be-removed-from-shelves-by-october-2017.html

Or you’ve come across a website you think is perfect to use in a paper in the first hit on the Google list.

So what do you do?

Do you send it to all your friends? Post an angry message? Start a protest?

Assume it’s OK to use for your paper?

Before you do any of that start out by evaluating the website. You’ve probably heard about different evaluation systems like Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.

Ask Yourself

But before you get that far you can check a few basic things. Let’s try it for this Peanut Butter Reese’s Cup story I linked to above.

1. Does it seem likely? Does what you already know about the situation (i.e. that Reese’s Peanut Butter cups are so popular they are available in multiple sizes) make sense with this story?
2. What are other sources saying about it? Do an internet search for the title of the article or the name of the website it’s on.
3. What is it saying about itself? Check out the homepage of the Breaking News 365 website.
4. Read the paragraph below where Snopes points out things that should raise a red flag about this story. Look for them.

“Setting aside the fact that the manufacturer of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has not announced the demise of the product, the article bears some of the hallmarks of fake news: the manufacturer is not named; no location is given for the press conference; no representative of the company is named; a quote purportedly taken from a press conference is not attributed to anyone; and the article is poorly written, featuring inappropriate exclamation marks, missing words, and grammatical mistakes. ”

http://www.snopes.com/reeses-peanut-butter-cups/

Next Time

So the next time you are confronted with a story that outrages you, makes you panic, or it’s the only place you see information you want to use in your paper, stop, breathe, read it closely, think about it, and see what other people are saying.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Is that information good, or is it CRAAP?

Tags

Information Evaluation, Information Literacy, Website Evaluation

As a student, researcher, faculty member – or just in your everyday life, you encounter a lot of information. Maybe you read something on a website, in a book, or hear it from a friend or colleague. Many of us have a “gut feeling” about the veracity of much information – but what do you do when you’re evaluating information for research? What criteria can you use to see if your “gut” is right and your information good or not so good?

This man is skeptical about the sources of his information. Are you? From Flickr user joe calhoun.

Your Kirkwood librarians are always happy to help you evaluate information. It’s part of what we’re taught in graduate school, so we encourage you to drop by the reference desk, give us a call, email us, or chat with us online any time. Yet for those times when you can’t get us, there are some handy resources to help you make decisions on your own – Kirkwood Libraries have handouts available for you at our locations. Another one of my favorite guidelines for evaluating information  is the (*ahem*) “CRAAP Test” developed by the Meriam Library at the California State University – Chico.

Here’s a quick overview of their method:

Currency: How timely is the information? Do you need the most current information or will older information suffice? Perhaps beware if you can’t tell WHEN a piece of information was published or updated.

Relevance: Is this information really relevant to what you’re working on? Is it written at an appropriate level, for an appropriate audience, and how does it compare to other sources?

Authority: Can you determine who wrote, published, and or sponsored the information, including the credentials thereof? Be mindful of conflicts of interest, such as when a corporate sponsor may have financial gain at stake in your believing certain information.

Accuracy: What cited evidence supports the information? Has the information been reviewed or vetted by others, and if so, who?  How else can you verify this information?

Purpose:  Why does this information exist – is it for entertainment, scholarly purposes, to sell or persuade? How objective do the authors seem, and is there opinion or propaganda-like language in the piece?

Click here for a detailed handout on the CRAAP Test for evaluating information. Many thanks to Sarah Blakeslee and the library at CSU Chico for the excellent test and memorable acronym!

How do you evaluate information? What advice, tools, or guidelines are you applying to evaluate your information-world?