Skeptics have been active on the Internet for quite some time. Hundreds of skeptic blogs are active, and the oldest have existed for around a decade. In a recent survey I found over 75 skeptical podcasts, the oldest ones in continuous operation for over six years. I’ve also surveyed hundreds of sources of skeptical video content that can be found on sites such as YouTube, including the JREF's own channel. 

So why did the JREF appoint me as a Research Fellow in electronic media? It would appear skeptics have electronic media completely covered already. Is there anything left to research?

In a word, yes.

Many interesting changes have been occurring on the web and in other electronic media in the last few years. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have captured a huge amount of people’s attention online, in part taking it away from blogs, forums and web sites (including those devoted to skepticism).

Smartphones such as the iPhone, Android and others are increasingly becoming a primary means for some users to interact online. (And native applications or “apps” account for over half of that traffic, further reducing the time spent directly on web sites).

The mainstream media and the publishing industry have been affected by this as well. Some magazines and newspapers have been failing, while others scramble to reorient toward electronic publishing. Amazon recently announced that sales of electronic books had exceeded sales of paperback books for the first time.

The common thread through all of this is a radical transformation of how people consume information. This of course includes information about the paranormal, pseudoscience, alternative medicine. Skeptics must adapt to this change, and we must do so as quickly as possible.

This is not entirely bad news.

With this transformation have come entirely new ways of organizing people and information using the power of electronic media. By taking advantage of these tools and techniques, skeptics can often be more effective than they’ve ever been at reaching the general public. To top it all off, much of this is done via inexpensive or free services.

Social media sites (Twitter, Facebook) provide an unprecedented venue for skeptics to directly engage the public. Many are doing so, answering the posts made by creationists and anti-vaccine activists so that others can see the counter-arguments.

Another example is crowdsourcing. Wikipedia is an example of a tremendous Internet resource that has been built by aggregating the small efforts of thousands of individuals. Skeptics can contribute to Wikipedia itself, of course. But there are other crowdsourcing efforts that can more directly impact skeptics, and we can build our own as well.

Another example is the use of web services, also known as APIs. Targeted at programmers, they permit the creation of new services or sites that build upon the information published by another, in a programmatic fashion. By creatively using web services in ways that relate to skepticism, we can create new tools that skeptics can use. This was a big component of the talk I gave at The Amazing Meeting 6.

I’m very excited about the potential of all this and especially about the skeptics who have already begun using these tools and techniques.

In Texas a group of college students investigated a set of ghost lights called the Anson Lights, conclusively determining they were caused by car headlights. This was only possible by using the GPS mapping features of iPhones to directly track the lights back to their source.

In the UK an organization called Nightingale Collaboration is leading a crowdsourced reporting of misleading online alternative medicine claims to regulators. A companion piece of custom software called Fishbarrel was created by Simon Perry specifically to automate the collection of the data required in each complaint.

I have blogged about using the online safety tool called Web of Trust to create automatic warnings about pseudoscientific products and scams. Based on this, Canadian skeptics have created the new WOT Project to protect the ratings of skeptic sites. These efforts have the potential to get skeptical warnings about dangerous websites to over 500 million Facebook users.

Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia is another new project based on something I’ve blogged, this time applying skeptic person-power to the editing of Wikipedia.

These projects are all fantastic. Many of them would not have been possible even four years ago. But they are just the beginning. There are many other ways that electronic technology can be used to educate people about skepticism, reach out to the general public and more.

The JREF wants to encourage this. In my role as a Research Fellow I will be seeking these out and bringing them to you here.

The first fruits of my research were revealed Thursday when the brand new Today in Skeptic History application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch was released in Apple’s iTunes store. This is a free app that can educate skeptics about the history of scientific skepticism. I researched over 1,300 individual events relating to pseudoscience and the paranormal that date from prehistory al the way up to this year. We think it is a valuable tool for education.

I look forward to interacting with the supporters of the JREF on this and other electronic media projects.

Tim Farley is a JREF Research Fellow in electronic media. He is the creator of the website What's The Harm (whatstheharm.net) and also blogs at Skeptical Software Tools (skeptools.com). He researched the information in JREF's Today in Skeptic History iPhone app and will be leading the Advancing Skepticism Online workshop at TAM 9.

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