There are many rumors on the internet now. How can we tell if this news is a rumor?

Screening professional information sources

Ceng Guang, chief epidemiologist of China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, once defined the meaning of "false information" as follows: "Virtual" means unscientific and pseudoscience; "False" means going against the facts and reversing right and wrong. He believes that false information can be divided into three types, the first is rumors, the second is cognitive problems, and the third is information that has been falsified with scientific progress.

Ordinary citizens can't be experts in all fields, and even experts in all fields can't have the energy to verify all the information one by one. Therefore, in order to reduce the cognitive cost, they generally adopt "entrusted trust" (trust the authority and then trust the information published by themselves) to help judge the information beyond their professional ability.

For health communication information, the first thing is to screen the source.

Information source, also called information source, generally includes two concepts, one is the original source of information and the other is the original distribution channel of information. Taking "Shuanghuanglian can inhibit novel coronavirus" as an example, the original information sources are Shanghai Pharmacology Research Institute and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the information release channels are People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency.

An authoritative information source is not only an authoritative media platform, but sometimes it needs to go further, find the original source of information, and combine the two to analyze.

When you receive a new message, it is difficult to judge with your knowledge, so ask two questions first:

1, who said that?

2. Is what he said consistent with his professional field?

An art historian's evaluation of Dong Lei is authoritative, but it is not authoritative in the field of viruses. This is a simple fact. Especially in highly specialized fields, such as medical treatment, health care and law. Choosing authoritative sources with professional knowledge and trust such as media, self-media and experts can effectively reduce the chance of being cheated.

If a piece of information has been reported by hundreds of media, and the source cannot be directly confirmed, you can enter a title or keyword in the search engine and sort it in chronological order. The first source should be published first. Usually, there are no more than five sources (this is Google's data, which should be less in China). None of these five sources is professional, and the basic credibility is very low.