Refreshing encyclopaedias

2033

 

Creating and sharing online contents has never been so easy as nowadays. Since a systematic reliability check cannot be applied to the massive volume of the information ecosystem, news consumers may encounter hidden dangers like proliferation of ‘fake news’ or a style of communication aimed at reaching their emotions rather than their rationality.

Equal public access to information should also take into account proper linguistic diversity, as only 5% of the living languages are represented online and 46% of European citizens can only hold a conversation in their mother tongue.

In this scenario, encyclopaedias still represent a reliable tool to check facts and to accede to trustworthy knowledge. The European Parliamentary Research Service’s recent publication ‘Europe’s online encyclopaedias’ provides an exhaustive guide of national online encyclopaedias for all EU countries as well as a few non-EU countries, after going through the strengths and pitfalls of the most common online information channels as social media, Google and Wikipedia.

Maybe giving a chance to refresh a good old tool could be helpful to understand the changing world!

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Written by Massimo Bertocchi, terminology trainee at Termcoord