ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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Credibility of Online Sources

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[ bird caws ]

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What is a credible source?

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So, first let's look at that word.

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"Credible" basically just means "believable."

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It means "trustable."

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- Like street cred? - Exactly.

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There's probably some Latin derivative of that.

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- There is, actually. - Wow.

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- I think. I know there is an Italian derivative. - Well, "credo" would be...

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Right, exactly.

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So, in Italian, and I'm assuming Latin,

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the verb means "to believe."

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Credibility means that you can trust or believe that source.

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That's basically it.

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If you go to Joe Shmoe's blog

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and you read about something

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versus going to a .gov site

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and reading about something.

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.Gov is more credible.

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That's kind of what it comes down to.

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But there are a few ways that you can determine credibility.

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And we talked a little bit about this with

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what sources are cited.

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But there's four main categories.

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Let's see if I can get them.

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Authority,

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currency,

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objectivity, and support.

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So let's start with authority.

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This is the big one.

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Basically, who wrote it?

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Why did they write it?

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and should we believe them?

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are the questions we want to ask.

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Who's the author?

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Is the author someone who has

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the right background information to be giving us this information?

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Where are the author's credentials?

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Does it just say,

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"Dave Siminoff"?

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Or does it say "Dave Siminoff, founder of Shmoop"?

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How do we know?

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And if you don't know, go ahead and look the person up.

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See who they are.

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You wanna know where is this article being published?

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Or where is -- Whether it's an article or whatever it is online,

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where it's being published.

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Is it in a news source that you know to be credible?

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Is it in a tabloid which is not as credible?

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Is it on a blog? Is it on Wikipedia? Et cetera.

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So where the author is publishing it is important.

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And you can go down the list.

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But the main question here is

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"Is the person writing it and the people publishing it

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together are they people you can trust in?"

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And you might need to do some checking to find that out.

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Fair enough. And it's called LinkedIn.

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It's really good for checking these things.

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So the second thing is currency or, "Is the information current?"

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Number one thing, always look for a date.

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Depending on what you're reading about,

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it might not be as important.

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When you're talking about celebrities and fame,

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you definitely want current stuff.

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So you might be reading an article and be like,

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"Oh, man! There was a study that showed that

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zebras can talk?

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That's crazy!"

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And then it turns out that was in 2009

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and they did another study in 2014

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- and realized zebras can't talk. - Or it would've been 2009 BC

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- and Noah was having the conversation. - [ laughs ] Exactly, exactly.

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So, yeah, you have to make sure that the information is current.

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That's really important when it comes to stuff like science

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which changes all the time.

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The third thing is objectivity.

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This is what we talked about before.

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Is it an objective source?

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How do we find objectivity?

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Because we're in a world today

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where there are very few truly neutral sources.

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The evening news and, I guess with early cable news,

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was unapologetically brutally honest.

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And it showed pictures that were graphic

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that you wouldn't see in a normal prime time setting.

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And it was a journalist's credo

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to be credible, to be honest.

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Even if it went against their own beliefs

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and their own political bias,

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they strove to tell the truth.

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Today's world could not be more different.

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Everyone -- It's like they're marketing for a political side

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in one venue or another.

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It's like trying to view

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the world's history through a big, thick thing of gauze.

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Because nothing is clear anymore.

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There's very few honest lights.

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As you said, that's kind of how the world is.

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It's very hard to find an objective source.

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Even scientific, academic papers

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have some sort of bias from the author.

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There always is.

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The baggage an author or a publisher brings with them to a text

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is always gonna skew the language

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and how it's written one way or another.

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So all we can do is be aware of that

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and be ready for it.

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It's totally fine to cite something

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from a right-leaning or left-leaning source,

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as long as you acknowledge

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that it is right-leaning or left-leaning

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and therefore might be biased.

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We can't control how biased a specific journalist is

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or author of a text is.

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All we can do is be prepared for it

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and understand that and really look for it.

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So you're looking for maybe the most objective possible.

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If you have a choice between

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a newspaper article that's written in Fox news

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or one that's written in MSNBC

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and one that's written in something that people might say

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is a little more neutral,

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then you would wanna go with the more neutral one

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if you had the choice.

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If you didn't, and those were your two options,

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great, use them. But say,

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"Hey, I acknowledge this.

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While MSNBC is left-leaning,

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so we have to take what they say with a grain of salt,

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they say that blah blah blah..."

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And then the same with Fox news.

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So we just have to be aware of it.

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Got it. Makes sense.

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And then the last category is support.

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And this is when we're talking about citing sources.

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Who is the author or the publisher citing?

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When you come to Shmoop,

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we don't cite Wikipedia as a source.

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So, I love Wikipedia, I'm just gonna say that.

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If I need to know, like you said,

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just some basic information about something,

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absolutely start there.

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But that's what I always say, "Start there."

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If you have no idea

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what a topic is about --

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If you were to say to me right now,

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"I need you to know what this tiny particle of an atom

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of a nucleus something is."

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I have no idea what you're talking about, clearly.

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[ laughs ] As you can tell by what I just said.

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So finding a scientific article about it isn't gonna help me.

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What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to Wikipedia

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and I'm gonna be like, "Oh, this is what he's talking about."

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Then I'm gonna go to the scientific article.

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So just get that out there,

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Wikipedia is a fine place to get an overview

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of a subject.

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You just can't necessarily trust everything you read

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because it's written by people like you who know nothing.

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Wikipedia does have experts writing,

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but it also has people with huge biases writing.

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And while it's moderated,

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not everything is caught.

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And you go to pages and it'll say like,

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"This article is a stub." or "This article doesn't cite its sources."

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And you see that a lot on Wikipedia.

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So you just have to be really careful.

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The one thing you can do if you are using Wikipedia is

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anything that's not cited, don't trust it.

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And if it's cited, there's that little blue number next to it.

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Click it. It drops you down to the bottom of the page.

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And it shows you what that source was.

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Go to the original source.

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If so-and-so said --

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This is the page on zebras and it says,

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"Zebras can talk."

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and there's a little source,

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click down to the link,

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and if you click on that and it is a link to Nature

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or Science or some periodical that's valued,

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then you go, "Hey! Zebras can talk! Okay."

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If you read that and it actually says that.

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Yeah, and more likely than not, it's a link

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- to NFL Referees. - Exactly.

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[ laughs ] Exactly.

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So you always have to check the source.

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And that trickles down everything you're reading.

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Whenever you're reading something, check the source,

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check that person's source, check that person's source.

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[ pen writing ]

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What is a primary source?

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What is a secondary source?

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How can sources vary in credibility?

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And that's "vary" with an "A."

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