Introduction to Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #1

We love the internet! It's a wealth of information where we can learn about just about anything, but it's also kind of a pit of information that can be false or misleading. So, we're partnering with Mediawise and the Stanford History Education Group to make this series on Navigating Digital Information. Let's learn the facts about facts!

Special thanks to our partners from MediaWise who helped create this series:
The Poynter Institute

Follow MediaWise and their fact-checking work across social:

MediaWise is supported by Google.

Thanks to the following Patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:

Eric Prestemon, Sam Buck, Mark Brouwer, Naman Goel, Patrick Wiener II, Nathan Catchings, Efrain R. Pedroza, Brandon Westmoreland, dorsey, Indika Siriwardena, James Hughes, Kenneth F Penttinen, Trevin Beattie, Satya Ridhima Parvathaneni, Erika & Alexa Saur, Glenn Elliott, Justin Zingsheim, Jessica Wode, Kathrin Benoit, Tom Trval, Jason Saslow, Nathan Taylor, Brian Thomas Gossett, Khaled El Shalakany, SR Foxley, Yasenia Cruz, Eric Koslow, Caleb Weeks, Tim Curwick, D.A. Noe, Shawn Arnold, Malcolm Callis, Advait Shinde, William McGraw, Andrei Krishkevich, Rachel Bright, Jirat, Ian Dundore
--

Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

[derekfnord]

Of all the Crash Course series, THIS is the one that really needs to go viral in the mainstream and get hundreds of millions of views. We need this information SO much!

[TheVanuPhantom]

Next up; CrashCourse, can I trust CrashCourse?

[Bitsmap]

A professor here in Brazil said that we are in a flood of information, and we should be teaching children how to swim in this flood.

[lottielotte]

that subtle all the way down animation ;)

So excited for this series!

[Noah-wxfm]

I trust this guy! I believe every word he said! The graphics were really good!

[IceMetalPunk]

So this is basically Crash Course: Critical Thinking for the Digital Age. We definitely need more people to see this!

As someone with a background in biomedical engineering and genetic modification, who currently works as a software engineer and has 15 years of tech experience, it seems to me that technology and medicine are two fields where the belief in misinformation (and disinformation) runs rampant through the public. I could be overestimating the proportion of people who believe it, but... there's a movement that thinks vaccines cause autism and death, there's a movement that thinks GMOs will poison / kill / mutate anyone who eats them, and we all know AI will inevitably try to kill us and self-driving cars are more accident-prone than humans, right? (*Cough* that was sarcasm, it's false *cough* ) And the number of times I've seen people cite sources which are flagrantly inaccurate, or worse, which intentionally add citations and totally misrepresent what those citations even say in the first place... I swear, if I have to see someone quote or cite Serralini one more time, I'm going to punch their face. Gently, of course, but hard enough to get the point across.

</rant>

TL;DR: Dear Dante, we need more critical thinking courses in the public eye, like this one. Thank you, Crash Course people!

[ciervo]

It's curious how mature he now looks compared to World History

[falnica]

Immediately after I finishes your vlogbrothers video this video was uploaded, uncanny

[Bongs]

7:15
Subtitles: "When you know that gif is pronounced gif"
Deaf people: *[visible confusion]*

[RangerRuby]

Hey Crash Course! I just wanted to say that today's video was great! Not only is John back ( thanks for that 😉 ), but there was a lot of great things said and taught. I always enjoy how you make your videos fun and interesting for the viewers as well as including great information! This comment is getting long now, but before I post it, I just want to say keep going, for all the nerds who love to watch, for all the college students studying for exam week, and for all the people who just want to learn about this wonderful world and community we live in. Thank you!

[wrlrdqueek]

John Green, stuck in the pocket of big library. 😛

[camiloiribarren]

Yes! Finally, John is back and teaching us about daily life online surfing

[yaumelepire]

In Québec, we are taught to evaluate sources by checking if they themselves cite their own sources, identify their authors and sponsors, and if they are objective or seem biased. We also look at whether or not the source is written professionally by someone that knows what they are talking about. All those criteria are, of course, graded by importance; if we come across an article that doesn't cite its sources or identify its author, it usually means that it is not to be used or trusted, but a source that is not entirely objective is fine if it gives evidence that sufficiently supports its point of view. We are told to use our judgement as well, as we know that a plumber, for example, doesn't need to cite a source when explaining how to repair faulty plumbing since it is evident he knows what he is talking about. I don't know if it's done elsewhere in Canada though, since education is a provincial responsibility. I hope it is. It's a flawed method, I don't pretend otherwise, but it is at least a good basis to avoid the worst cases of false information.

[tobyhring]

Thanks so much for this video. I teach a 6th grade history class on Information Revolutions and this is a perfect video to summarize the benefits and challenges of the internet. Also, thank you for speaking slowly. I can't use Crash Course history because they are too fast.

[TechHunter]

This is kind of a nitpick, but I think it's worth mentioning anyway:
Obviously a good-looking site shouldn't be assumed to have good information, but a *bad* looking one can often be discarded immediately, depending on the *way* that it's bad. Websites for different audiences have different styles to them; Vox, NYTimes, and The Atlantic all have that "millennial news site" vibe, blogs usually have their content in backwards chronological order starting on the front page, and those sites trying to sell you some guy's business ebook all have a huge essay about his story and why he's so brilliant. Academic sites have a look, too: very little styling, usually just text and images on a plain color background.
I think of this as part of "internet street smarts". In real life, just because a street looks normal or classy doesn't mean there aren't pickpocketers around every lamppost, but you know not to walk down a dingy alleyway or an unlit street at night. We can use these tricks to quickly discard sources as bad without having to go through any sort of involved fact checking process, if we learn what aesthetic *only* bad websites use (ex: blinking ads everywhere, a long essay trying to sell a book on the front page, or images that appear stolen from somewhere).

[lhfirex]

I hope one episode is titled The Fake News in Our Feeds and another is Fact-checking All the Way Down.

[Emily-cehd]

Man, my mom is a librarian and has been trying to teach this to her students for years. There are so many schools trying to teach tech literacy that I feel this series will be super useful!!

[weirdral]

John, you always encourage people going to the library, which us librarians appreciate, but how often are you going? How often are your kids going?

[kausthubkrishnamurthy]

As much as I love all the crash course content in history and everything else this may well turn out to be the one thing people need most right now.
It's not the CrashCourse we deserve but the one we need right now. 🤣👌🏾

[ranirosiana]

God, your speech has improved so much! This means a lot for me because I am not native english speaker and I have a lot of difficulty following your speech on many of your videos. Because you spoke more slowly now I can totally understand what you're saying on first watch. And this topic is super interesting and relatable too (because this year indonesia is going to have election and the fake news generator is on fire)!!! I'm so gonna watch the entire episode of this course man! Thank you so much!!!