Worried about the situation in Iran, but not sure who or what to believe? This is the new emerging reality of news. Everyone is struggling with it including the established media like CNN, FOX and NPR.
When the media consisted of a few people working for a few companies, it was a lot easier to verify a story and trust a source. A reporter’s and by extension the entire network’s reputation and value was based on the quality of the information and the reliability of the sources the information came from. In today’s twitter/facebook/blog world, there isn’t an obvious structure of trust to fall back on, but a new system is emerging.
Peer Source Verification is occurring in a really strong way for the first time with the Iran election situation driving the process. With Iranian citizens blogging and twittering about what is happening in Iran at the same time as Iran’s efforts to control, limit and often co-opt the information coming out of Iran people around the world are using their existing trust networks, their personal relationships, common sense and a sophisticated understanding of our modern tools to ferret out who is really presenting factual information and who is spewing spam or chaff. One such example is an effort going on at Twitspam to identify Fake Iran Election Tweeters.
This emerging model of trust has some existing models to draw ideas from, but its implementation and effectiveness are developing both organically and through the concerted efforts of several bloggers, tweeters and activists around the world. How are your altering the definition of trusted source and how are your perceptions of trusted sources changing as the new Peer Source Verification model develops?
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