One of the most interesting questions asked in week four’s symposium is “how do you validate information on the internet?” Upon answering this question one of the tutors said it could depend how many sources are reporting. The example used, was the tragic event that occurred on that day, which was the death of Robin Williams. At first this news sounded like a hoax, but every single news site was reporting it, and then followed by the statements from his family and business partners it was confirmed to being true. Now the claim that one of the methods to validate the information you find is to look at the number of sources, is a pretty reasonable one, however I wouldn’t agree with it completely.

My time online is spent essentially on film websites, and comment sections. These sites report the latest on movie news everyday, and the information that is provided is generally one hundred percent true. However every now and then I read something that is completely untrue. For example a film that is set to be released in the near future is Assassins Creed based on the hit video game, and one of the draws of this film adaptation is that it has the current Hollywood star Michael Fassbender attached as the lead actor and producer. I read a comment on YouTube once of a person saying that he or she is no longer looking forward to the film since Fassbender had dropped out. My instant reaction was ‘how come I didn’t hear about that?’ because none of my go to sites had reported the news. I did a search for this online and what I did in fact find was one website, which I won’t name, had reported the story without any credibility what’s so ever. I recognized the story to being a fake. This is a case in which I was able to recognize it being a fake because of the limited amount of sources.

However there have been cases where I have seen the opposite. One of the things about the Internet is that it goes crazy for the tiniest bit of news or an idea, and when consuming all of this film news there tends to be reports that are completely not true. Some of these sites report stories as rumors, and how these rumors originate are different.

There was a case in which an upcoming superhero film was casting its villain, and there where a few fans on blogs who stated that the actor they wanted to see portray the character was ‘Breaking Bad’ leading man Bryan Cranston. This was just a simple case of fan casting, not true at all, but within a few hours almost every film site I knew was reporting this as a rumor, and over the course of time some claimed that they had inside information that confirmed the casting. Now in some cases there have been times when rumors are spread they end up being true, but in this particular case it was not. The casting of this character was revealed and it wasn’t Bryan Cranston, and both Cranston and the studio, including the filmmakers said that Cranston wasn’t even approached or considered for the role.

Speaking from my experience I can say that in order to validate content on the Internet the idea of the amount of sources claiming it isn’t always viable, but it most certainly can be, but I think what should be looked at is where the information is coming from. In my opinion the most reliable stories are the ones that come directly from the source. In my case I follow movie news, and I tend to trust the once that are confirmed directly from the filmmakers themselves.