Indymedia and reliability: a paradox or an obvious combination?
Indymedia is an anonymous source of information. How do you, as a user, know whether the articles you read are reliable?
This article is written in an attempt to investigate reliability on Indymedia. Comments will be anonymously used for a research on the objectivity of Indymedia in the context of anthropology and globalization. We would really appreciate your contribution to this article and will use it carefully. Thank you in advance.
Indymedia is an alternative media platform, that exists to bring the news conventional media fail to bring. The idea is to bring in-depth stories and give a voice to alternative ideas and critiques on society. It has a simple ideal: to make the world a better place. But how does that work in practice?
The conventional news has a clear space in which it operates. NOS Journaal brings different information than RTL Boulevard, De Telegraaf is quite different from De Groene Amsterdammer. They all have their value, but contribute to bringing news in quite different ways. One of the advantages of these conventional media is that it is easy to assess their value: they have a certain mission, a clear vision on what is important, what is not and whether to give serious, in-depth information or rather a quick and flashy overview of what’s going on. The journalists that contribute to it can be googled and found on wikipedia to find out what their background is and why they are involved in this case. This also makes it possible to decide who is an expert on the subject and who is not.
When one spends time on Indymedia, however, anonymity is very important, and for very good reasons. However, the consequence is that it is not clear who contributed to the article and how he or she got that information. Is this really an expert speaking or is it someone that turns his opinion into facts? With other words, how do you, as a user, know what is reliable and what is not? Do you believe that people always tell the truth or do you know how to assess articles? Where do you base your assessment on?
We would like to find out what the opinion of the user, you, is. Please let us know what makes Indymedia your preferred source of news and why.