Ways to determine the reliability or authenticity of website

In this era of globalisation, it is possible for us to get all the information in a single click. Moreover, websites maintained by traditional news outlets (BBC, CNN, Star online) web pages (Wikipedia), educational blogs and videos posted by various groups also offer us with some of the information we require. Unlike similar information found in newspapers or television broadcasts, information available on the Internet is not keeping pace for quality or accuracy. As a result, it is predominantly vital for the individual Internet user to evaluate the resource or information. Keep in mind that almost anyone can circulate anything they wish on the Web. It is often tricky to determine authorship of Web sources, and even if the author is listed, he or she may not always stand for him or herself honestly, or he or she may represent opinions as fact. Hence, the responsibility is on the teachers to train the students to evaluate resources effectively. The students must learn to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic websites and information. This is because, nowadays students are exposed to all sorts of digital media and they tend to believe all the information they get from the Internet is true without a second thought. As millions of people around the world post information online for all to see, it can be vulnerable to get factual information mixed in with things that are absolutely false. Anyone can publish opinion, a hoax, or plainly false information. In fact, some of these falsehoods can come from seemingly reliable sources.

There are some ways or strategies that teachers and students can apply to ensure that the information that they obtain from online resources are authentic/reliable information that they can use in their teaching/learning of the English language. First and foremost, we should verify the author, in terms of his/her background. To discover pertinent information about the author, we can check personal homepages on the Web, campus directory entries and information retrieved through search engines.

Next, we should check the resources within the website such as currency. Information that is obsolete may be erroneous or incomplete. A well maintained Web site will generally tell us at the bottom of the initial screen when it was last updated and maybe even when it was originally created and made available on the Web. Other than that, we can check links within the website. An informational Web site in which all the hyperlinks are not functioning might not be a very reliable resource. Broken hyperlinks are not uncommon, due to the ever changing nature of the Web, but when there are many broken links on a Web site, it might be an indication that the site isn't maintained on a regular basis. In addition to that, we can check out the advertisements within the website too. The advertisements must be relevant to the current situation or issues. The outdated advertisements show that, the particular website is not maintained regularly and it may contain fake information. The most essential thing is we must confirm the contact information of the developers.   

Apart from that, we can validate the information by comparing with other websites. For example we can compare Wikipedia to ask.com. If the information is valid both sites will show the same information. We also can compare the information with the books in the library. Or check with more knowledgeable people like teachers, professors, educationists and so forth.

I can conclude that, the crisis with reliability of information on the Web is like the whispering game. Someone whispers a message to the first person, who whispers it to the second, and so on. By the time it gets to the last person, the message is hopelessly deformed. Web pages can work the same way when people get their information from other people's Web pages. Therefore, we should be aware of these matters and teach our students how to obtain the reliable information from the online resources.