True Tweets?

Blogs and tweets aren't necessarily true. Robin Lustig, of Radio 4's 'The World Tonight', writes in his newsletter about the difficulties of verifying blog reports coming out of Syria and, in particular, the abduction of the author of 'A Gay Girl in Damascus'. Now he's not even sure if she existed. Robin wrote "Does it matter if one blog among millions turns out to be a fake? Unfortunately, it does, especially in an environment where independent reporting is impossible, so that blogs and other online media become the only available substitute."
Can you or I, or any other average citizen, tell the difference between truth and fiction? Doesn't this cause a problem for Interactive Democracy? It's far easier to pressure our media institutions into telling the truth but far harder to do the same for Ms Anonymous self-publishing fiction online.

Making Sense of the World

Robin Lustig has been studying politics for decades as a student and journalist. Over the years he has made a number of programmes about democracy. His blog is available here and is well worth a read.