Fact or fiction?
I’ve chosen the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury as a source of inspiration for “Online reflection 3”. The book revolves around a fireman called Guy Montag and the setting is a dystopian society where censorship is being enforced by book burning and other forms of aggression by the state.

After reading the book I found there to be an uncanny resemblance to modern day North Korea. The book depicts a society where the state strives for absolute conformity of the people. Deviant behavior from the norm isn’t tolerated and will be corrected by any means necessary. Media is controlled and acts as way of indoctrinating the masses.

But that´s just North Korea, right? In “our” part of the world there is no such thing as censorship or spreading of misinformation, is there? Well, it’s very hard to reassure unbiased flow of information from either government or news outlets. There’s always an agenda and one has to be aware of this. The way we consume news today is very different compared to, say, 20 years ago. The arrival of the internet has vastly improved the possibilities to get different sides of a story. The problem is that this also makes spreading misinformation way easier and the reader must be critical when consuming news.

So, the next time you read an article you have to ask yourself, is this fact or fiction?