To prepare an informative presentation, every author should be able to work with information. This includes abilities to find, analyze and utilize credible information. Today, when everybody has access to the Internet, it is very easy to find a lot of information just by using Google. Unfortunately, not everything written on the Internet is true, and there are many fake news and publications with untrue data. That is why it is necessary to be able to work with information in order not to become a victim of deception and mislead others.
The first step to checking information for its validity is to look for other sources. If many different sources publish the same information, then it should be trusted more than information from one particular source. However, there are situations when various sources distribute fake data. In this case, a person needs to look for the origin of the message. Every publication should have a reference to the original source, where the information was taken (Ahmad & Jan 2019, p. 356). In this case, a person needs to check for the credibility of the original resource and the best way to do this is to read about the author. If the author is an acknowledged specialist, holds academic posts, and has many publications, then they should be more trustworthy than authors with no such achievements. If the publication was made by a well-known cited media, rather than a narrowly known media publishing unverified information, there is a better chance that it is not a hoax.
That is why online resources like Wikipedia are inappropriate for use as an academic reference and should be used only to get the most general understanding of the problem. Wikipedia pages do not have particular authors and they can be edited by everybody. It is better to use other online resources like Google Scholar because it looks only for academic research that are made by people who have a qualification to write about what they are studying. Therefore, fact-checking should be the most important part of making an information presentation, and working with academic sources is the best way to prepare it.
Reference
Ahmad, M. & Jan, M.A. (2019). Evaluating research: Diversity and credibility of information sources. The Dialogue, 13(4), 353-368.