Survey- Information media, trustworthiness, and its impact on sociopolitics
3 replies, posted
It goes without saying that the key to any social or political issue is understanding it, and the key to understanding something is having the right information on it. (No way! really?)
Say you live in Country A, and in school, you were taught about how Country A valiantly liberated the oppressed people of Country B in a war decades ago. They painted a picture of bright-eyed young Country A servicemen marching triumphantly through the streets after their victory, encountering a gauntlet of tossed roses and cheers and Country A flags while the bloodthirsty, oppressive drones of Country B's ousted dictator lowered their weapons and were served justice by the rightful victors. Then you go to Country B, and the people there tell a very different story of soldiers from Country A- all of them the savage attack dogs let loose from the leash of their greedy, imperialist masters- looting priceless artifacts, murdering innocent civilians, and putting entire cities to the torch. Meanwhile, everyone knows that Country B's government is at severe odds with Country A, and vise versa. You were never in that war, so your only source of information comes from people who claim to know- people who might be very opinionated, or themselves mislead. In such an instance, how do you know who to trust?
The following questions are part of a sociology project. There's no right or wrong answer, no political agenda being pushed, or trick questions so some conspiracy theorist can jump out and go "ah-HA! You're a slave to [insert country here]'s propaganda machine!"; just the meat and bones of everything we know, and why we think we know it. Feedback on the questions themselves is also welcome.
[B]1- What sources of information do you trust the most (particular news outlets, blogs, etc)?
2- What do you think makes a source trustworthy, such as those you listed?
3- What sort of social/political issues do you think are the most important for people to be informed of? Why?
4- Why is it important for people to be involved in such issues at all?
5- For such issues that can be approached from different sides, such as a presidential election, what importance do you think there is in taking a side?
6- Why is it important- if at all- that information media have a standard of being fair and balanced?
7- What constitutes criteria for fair and balanced reporting?
8- What do you think makes your trusted sources right (or more agreeable)? What makes ones with which you do not agree wrong (or less agreeable)?
9- What grounds do you think others have in following sources with which you do not agree, or think to be wrong?
10- If you were to enter an argument about reliable sources of information with aforementioned people, what points would you use to disprove them, if any?
11- Anyone can claim to have evidence- How do you think such claims can be backed up, or contrariwise, disproven?
12- What do you think makes information more than just "people telling you things"?
13-What kinds of issues do you think are a matter of perspective? What kinds of issues do you think are not?
14- What solutions do you think could be used to counter the spread of misinformation?
15- What sort of positive impact do you believe properly conveyed information can have on society?[/B]
Can't people just make these surveys in google documents or one of the other billion survey making services out there
Do you really expect us to spend the time to answer all 15 of those questions? To be honest, I don't think anybody wants to spend an hour typing out those responses for some random kid's project.
Online surveys are one of those things that never really represent the whole population because the responses you get are only from those who actually saw the survey, and who feel strongly enough about the issue to actually answer.
Also god damnit, what happened to using something like surveymonkey/whatever or google docs? It's like everyone really wants to make a shitty survey that'll get hardly any responses at all now.
Stop it.
Come on man.
(seriously)
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