How can we improve the online space?

For my final project of Social and Communicative Aspects of the Internet and ICTs, I explored social media and its impact on the media. One of the key findings was that social media has created opportunities for the mass public to engage in news creation and distribution, hence improving information access. One problem here, however, is the issue with fake news - now that everyone can act as a journalist in the digital space, we are lacking the central system for fact-checking. 

Then how can we improve the quality of information that we see online? 

One way is to develop a course for online literacy - kids these days grow up using digital devices so we should improve online literacy education. Right now, when I google 'online literacy education,' the majority of search results are about the master's program for online literacy education, but we should not postpone this until people have already turned adults. If anything, online literacy education should start early so that users always tell themselves to become mindful users of the web; at the end of the day, the quality of online content is determined by the users, not the tool. 

Kids these days are always exposed to digital devices

Another way is to strengthen the policy about online content on social media. For this, we would need active participation from companies, such as Facebook and YouTube, where people frequently use to read the news. One possible solution might be for users to get social ratings, the one that is similar to Uber drivers and riders. Once people publish or share content, they will get ratings about the quality of their content. This score can be based on other readers' opinions or the quality of the news source. Such a quality assurance tool will incentivize users to share high-quality content. 

Uber rating scores that help maintain the quality of both drivers and riders 

The details of such quality assurance policy need further discussion,  but the whole idea here is that to address issues such as fake news, we need active participation both from the users and from the tools, such as social media. I would like to close this blog post with the video about Mark Zuckerberg's senate hearing from last year when Facebook was accused of distributing fake news during the last election.