Source criticism criticism

A few weeks ago the site Internetkunskap.se went live, with the aim to publish a number of videos to enhance the Internet knowledge and competence among school kids in Sweden.

A good initiative, which fills a need.

But, last week Internetkunskap.se published the second video about internet source evaluation (källkritik). Obviously an important topic in the context. However, the video has a major flaw.

"How to validate a search result..?"
About two minutes into the film a search is made to find out which city is the capital of Brazil. The first search result is from Wikipedia, and suggests that the capital is Brasilia. So far so good, but as the topic of the video is how to evaluate information found on Internet the film goes on. Next follows a discussion on that you can't trust a search result as such, but then..

"...click on the search result and read the page!"
About three minutes into the video we are ready to verify that Brasilia indeed is the capital city of Brazil. And the best way to do that is to click on the search result and read on the site that Brasilia is the capital. Right... (Not, of course...)

This small lapse hurts the overall impression in a number of ways.

• It makes you look for other weaknesses in the video
  And there are some to be found...
  The most critical one is the lack of any discussion on the type of source (ie that Wikipedia is editable by anyone) or the need to identify the publisher and the intention of the publisher.
• It makes you wonder about the overall project
  Will the other films have similar flaws? What's the intention and target group? And who is really behind the site (source criticism...)?
  Have a look at the first and third movie as well. And look for the upcoming ones.
  
• It might be the takeaway for the target group
  "I have done my "källkritik", I clicked in the search result and read it" (Not the sole message from the video, but an easy one to catch...)

The video discusses the need to provide references for information, and to get as close as the original source as possible. But it doesn't come anywhere near discussing "källkritik" as an academic/scientific method. (Or actually, the films shows this, but I feel the reference is misplaced in the overall context provided by the video).

I originally found it a bit humorous, and a nice touch, that the presenter of this specific topic is a PR consultant, who furthermore uses the alias "Doktor Spinn" (what is a spin doctor?). But with this major flaw it puts a (probably unintended) flavour to the overall video.

(Note: I have used the Swedish word "källkritik" in several places, instead of the term "source criticism", because I am not sure about the best translation.)

And here is the video:


Anyway, I'm looking forward to the coming videos. And tomorrow I plan to be at the Stockholm Social Media Lunch Club, where both @annika and @doktorspinn will attend. Let's see if they have read this by then...

But again, for the second video my suggestion is, as we say in Sweden - "Gör om, gör rätt".

(Minor update to the text 100305 - rewrote and moved the paragraph on spin doctors further down)