Crap detector Part III: verify Tweets, FB

Lately I have been teaching my students at Tsinghua University how to verify information they get in press releases, hear from news sources and see on the web. This is my third entry on the subject.

Crap detector Part I: Credibility as business model
Crap Detector Part II: Mr. Daisey's Apple Factory

The website journalism.co.uk has posted the most thorough list of techniques I have seen of how journalists can verify information they find on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media.

Crap detector Part I: Credibility as business model

Crap Detector Part II: Mr. Daisey's Apple Factory

A digital news organization has to differentiate itself from the mass of online competitors vying for people's attention. The best way is to be credible, reliable and trustworthy. 

Credibility is the most valuable asset of a news organization. It  attracts a community whose members can collectively support the site with their resources as fans, recommenders, subscribers, advertisers, event attendees or customers.

Credibility is also harder to find online. You have to sift through a lot of garbage to find the nuggets of gold. Howard Rheingold describes this journalistic practice as crap detection and devotes a chapter to it in his book "Net Smart."

Crap Detector Part II: Mr. Daisey's Apple Factory

Crap detector Part I: Credibility as business model

A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast of "This American Life" called "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory," which was the story of a technology geek who goes to China to see where his iPhone was made.

In the course of the story, the narrator, Mike Daisey, makes assertions about Foxconn, the manufacturer, including that it hires underage workers, overworks employees and exposes them to hazardous chemicals. The story was excerpted from Daisey's one-man stage show.

Bold and intrepid

I was immediately suspicious of Daisey's account because he was so much the protagonist of the story. He depicted himself as bold and daring, as undertaking a task that newspaper reporters had warned him was too risky and dangerous. But he was going anyway to interview Foxconn employees, in defiance of the armed guards at  the gates.