Critical thinking is an essential tool for everyday living. It is a skill for telling the difference between what is true and what isn’t. Without it, you and those close to you can be deceived and preyed upon. Young people can be targeted and manipulated by predators. Scammers can swindle people out of their life savings. People can be swayed at the ballot box by lies and deception. Even our simplest decisions, such as what product to buy or what link to click on, can turn out badly because we have accepted poor information. There has never been a time when facts and fiction can be spread so widely and so quickly. CFIC provides you with information to improve your critical thinking literacy skills and highlights how and why misinformation and disinformation is spread.
- Misinformation: false information that is not intended to cause harm
- Disinformation: false information that is intended to manipulate
- Malinformation: information that stems from the truth but is exaggerated to mislead
CFIC recognizes that even people with the best of intentions can easily fall prey to misleading or false information. Statistics Canada tells us that the average Canadian spends over 6 hours per day accessing the Internet, and over 2 hours per day using social media. With this vast access to information, it is impossible to fact check each article, and difficult to know where to turn for legitimate facts. This is even more challenging when the bad information contains an element of truth.
Critical thinking is a necessary life long process in a modern complex world, where disinformation and misinformation are ubiquitous.
Diane Bruce – Critical Thinking Chair
Since humans are unable to be experts in every field, we need ways to evaluate and verify the expertise of others and we need to know when it is important to do so. Finding information on the Internet to support any position is easy. Understanding which information is reliable is much more difficult. Being able to do so matters. Critical thinking matters.
This is why, CFIC is bringing you a series of articles designed to help you know when to fact check and how to fact check. Articles like:
- Check your Outrage
- A Picture Says a Thousand Words (how to fact check photos)
- The Internet and Free Speech
- Fact-Checking: Not the only weapon in the critical thinking toolbox
- Misinformation and Hate
- Fighting Misinformation
Please donate to CFIC to build and publish our online library of critical thinking tools for everyday life, and to help us continue to provide high quality, critical thinking education.