I have at times said in my comments that I am critical about the influence online social media has on our capacity to digest and handle the information overload with regards to its factual truth.

I found an interview in the German weekly news paper "Die Zeit" and just started to translate it. (I am stuck here and have nothing better to do - so be foregiving of my sins. I take responsibility for my lack of professional translation skills, and all my grammatical mistakes. All the errors do belong to me and the hightlighted text as well.)

Just for fun and for your information.

We Bury Ourselves in our Prejudices - American students do not recognize on the Internet whether information is true or false. A conversation with Sam Wineburg about the digital mob and the importance of better education

Interview: Anant Agarwala - 11 December 2016 THE TIME No. 51/2016, 8 December 2016 1 Comment - (SAM WINEBURG is Professor for Educational Sciences at the University of Stanford.)

DIE ZEIT: Professor Wineburg, "gloomy" are the findings of your new study, you write in your introduction. What did you find out?

Sam Wineburg: That the vast majority of young people, from twelve-year-old students to college students, can not, deplorably, distinguish whether information on the Internet is true or untrue. There is this myth that youth has a kind of "digital intelligence" because they deal with digital devices so effortless. That's not right.

ZEIT: What kind of your study's findings do you worry about?

Wineburg: Among the 12- and 13-year-olds, 80 percent could not distinguish between news and advertising. Journalism in the US is now funded by sponsored content, so-called native advertising. Advertising that camouflage itself as a journalistic text. There is "sponsored content" written above the articles - but we have found out that the vast majority of young people who spend all day online have no idea what that means.

ZEIT: Do you have an example?

Wineburg: We have presented two articles on climate change to high school students. One written by a science journalist, a second on the same website - sponsored by the oil company Shell. Almost 70 percent of the students felt the PR contribution was more credible.

ZEIT: Can you explain that?

Wineburg: People have always been credulous. What is new is that we are bombarded with information on the Internet from all sides. In order to deal with this oversupply, we revert to a few simple rules to evaluate the information. One of them is: data and statistics are good. The Shell article contains a few tables and graphs that are obviously convincing, regardless of who created them and who is interested in them.

ZEIT: Which factors influence the credibility of information?

Wineburg: In other examples of our study, pupils were deceived by photographs that supposedly portrayed what had been written, but came from other contexts. Thus, how an information is presented alive also plays a role.

ZEIT: This also applies outside the Internet!

Wineburg: Yes, but we live in a completely new reality. Before the Internet came, experts talked about their subject area, reviewed and edited journalist information. The responsibility they have accepted for us is now put on to each individual on the Internet. This has not yet happened in the history of mankind.

ZEIT: Many say the Internet is democratizing the information transfer

Wineburg: A few weeks ago it was reported that a guy spread fake news from his living room in the suburbs of Los Angeles through Facebook. More people accessed his stories than stories on USA Today, one of the largest daily newspapers in the country. A normal citizen can influence millions of people with very modest means through cleverness, deception and wiliness. The freedom of the press was extended to the little man. To every political issue arise websites, which pretend to be independent, but actually represent interests. This is dangerous.

ZEIT: In the crucial phase of the US election campaign, Fake News have reached more people through Facebook than real news. What do you conclude from it?

Wineburg: Today, the whims of the digital mobs decide whether or not something reaches many people. The lie that the Pope supports Donald Trump has been shared about a million times. What we observe on the Internet - even by the newly elected president - is that information is disseminated separated from its source. Every critical thinking person knows that information and source are always strongly connected.

ZEIT: There are also those who shout out "Luegenpresse = liar's press" and have lost confidence in the established media.

Wineburg: There will always be ideologues resistant to facts, we can not change that. Although newspapers always had a bias, some reporting with a rather leftliberal pov, the others with rather conservative pov, a basic fairness from them against those who think differently was expected. Good newspapers have always tried to show different opinions. On the Internet, on the other hand, everyone can create his own echo chamber, in which he is confirmed in his own opinion only. Facebook is tailoring our feed to our attitudes and interests, thus causing us more and more be buried in our own prejudices and bias.

ZEIT: Mark Zuckerberg has disclaimed every responsibility for the distribution of Fake News through Facebook.

Wineburg: Zuckerberg's explanation was deeply dishonest and disingenuous. He must acknowledge - as Robert Oppenheimer did after the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan project - that with Facebook he has created an instrument with devastating power. He must engage himself to ensure that this instrument serves peace and not destruction. Zuckerberg, too, has created a kind of bomb, he has to face that responsibility. He has to grow up.

ZEIT: What does Facebook have to do in your opinion?

Wineburg: Facebook could identify or eliminate Fake News as such. After all their crowdsourcing and their algorithms also work with pornographic material. However, business deceivers will always find a way to circumvent the security precautions. Therefore, it is not enough, if Facebook would change. The responsibility rests also on the schools. We need to think fundamentally about the competencies needed to get information about the world on the Internet. We need a drivers license for the Internet.

ZEIT: What do the schools do wrongly?

Wineburg: The moment students leave their school, they are online on Twitter or Facebook. The approach of many more advanced schools in the USA, however, is that of the ostrich: instead of recognizing that this generation informs itself quite differently, they ban the Internet at school. This creates a vulnerable generation that is not immune to the poison that is found on the Internet.

ZEIT: What do students have to learn?

Wineburg: It is about creating an awareness of the potential and dangers of the Internet. The philosopher Michael Lynch has expressed it perfectly: the Internet is the best fact-checking instrument of all times - and at the same time the best instrument for confirming one's own prejudices. What idetermines whether the Internet makes us more circumspect and more informative or more prejudiced? The only answer I can think of is education.

ZEIT: How is it supposed to be implemented?

Wineburg: We should teach young people to be committed to accuracy and diligence. For the time being, false certainties need to be broken: just because you can easily surf the Internet, you do not understand its mechanisms. Based on Heidegger, one can say that we become aware of our weaknesses only when something happens to us. First of all, we must show students how easily they can be fooled on the Internet. They need a baseline of scepticism as soon as they begin to use the Internet. But often teachers are deceived the same way, they also need help. We are developing a curriculum.

ZEIT: So not only young people use the internet too credulously?

Wineburg: I would like to say so: All of us suck - we all fail. We are talking about a global problem, regardless of status or education. A further study by us, which we publish in 2017, shows similar results for academics with doctoral degrees. With education comes arrogance. We all consider ourselves to be much smarter than we are when it comes to the Internet.

Well, I found this interview interesting coming from a Stanford professor for education. I hope you like it too and comment on what you disagree with. I am not going to comment. Too undereducated for that.