Another Indymedia article I looked at was on 9/11 conspiracies. This one had at least 15 contributors, and over half of them made multiple posts. An actual conversation was started, where people would respond to someone and then in turn get a rebuttal. Also, a significant amount of the posts were at least a paragraph long, as opposed to a sentence long. This made for much more engaging and persuasive arguments... however I realized that although this length reflects someone’s effort, there is also a fine line between too little and too much. Just like on our Counterpower contributions, when someone is reading online posts they may not initially know how credible the poster is, and a never-ending post may not be appealing if you can’t even be certain that it’s reliable. I think contributing smaller posts on a regular basis will not only be more appealing for people to read, but also more focused and distinct from rants.
But as far as credibility goes, how can we determine who is and who isn’t credible? This is definitely an issue on the Internet, because anyone and everyone can post. On Indymedia there are so many opinions surrounding one issue… how can we allow ourselves to be persuaded one way or the other when we don’t know who is trying to persuade us?
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I agree that credibility is a major problem. I mean how do we know that the people who are organizing a protest might actually be officials trying to catch protesters. Although I think that being anonymous on the internet is extremely important especially for those who must keep their identity hidden because of nonacceptance in their communities. I think that we cannot really solve the issue of credibility on the internet because anonymousness is so important.
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