Digital information deserves a special category all its own. The Internet
began as a way for scientists to exchange data and observations in a timely
manner. Later educators joined the movement to enable the sharing of
professional information quickly and easily. Now the World Wide Web has become
the playground for anyone with a computer and phone service. This has brought
our world closer, enabling better global and multicultural socialization. It
makes fact checking easier with access to online reference material, databases,
and personal librarians. The WWW also complicates communication because anyone
can post information on their own webpage saying anything they like. The FCC
(Federal Communications Commission) has little leverage for regulating Internet
content, due to user invoked First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.
Domains
Evaluation of online content includes all of the above recommendations,
because print, audio, and video are all available online. However, additional
measures can be taken to justify our faith in what we find on a particular page
or website. Websites are published by a particular organization, commercial
enterprise, individual, government agency, or educational institution, thus the
domain tags .org, .com, .net, .gov, .edu, etc. There are other domains,
including country domains, such as .uk for United
Kingdom and ca for Canada.
Provided with the same information from three websites, .org, .gov, and .com,
which would you trust? Not an easy decision, is it? What if you knew they were
the American Medical Association’s pharmaceutical recommendations, Russian
government recommendations on pharmaceuticals, and Aestus Pharmaceuticals
Corporation of Canada?
Easier isn’t it? Knowing who publishes the information and the credentials of
the author are even more vitally important on the Internet.