Ethics of Sharing Information Online

In this section, you can find...

Thanks to the internet, today we’re not just consumers of news but broadcasters as well – and our friends and families are counting on us to only share accurate, reliable information.

In fact, half of us pay more attention to who shared a story with us than where it originally came from.[1]

The internet is all about sharing – sharing news, sharing videos, sharing our thoughts and opinions with our friends.

One of the hardest things about being a responsible sharer is to be aware of your own biases, the reasons why you might be more likely to believe something without evidence. These are aspects of the way we think that can lead us to accept false statements, reject true ones, or simply not ask enough questions.

Because social media makes us all broadcasters, we have a responsibility not just to avoid sharing misinformation but to take action when people in our network share it.