In some news websites, you will see an “Opinion” section, such as in Straits Times
Or the “Commentary” section in Channel News Asia.
Sometimes, opinions are also designed with a clickbait headline.
These are attention-grabbers that makes readers want to click to open the article
Here is an example of clickbait headlines.
You will often see phrases like “you won’t believe…” or “shocking facts about…”
When you see an article or video with many hashtags, it is a likely an opinion.
A spliced video is one that is cut and joined together by many video clips.
Many YouTube shorts, instagram reels and TikTok videos are spliced videos.
Compare Opinions 🤔
When we know that an article or a content that we have seen is somebody’s opinion, we must know how to compare them. We have to think about whether this opinion is broad or narrow. Let’s look at this TikTok video.
The lady in this video claims that bottled water is a scam. According to her, bottled water is harmful and she has shown screenshot of some articles or researches that she has done. However, the source of these information is not shown, which means that we can’t verify it. So how do we check opinions? We must compare different viewpoints.
A quick search on Google shows that the first two websites that are surfaced did mention about arsenic found in some brands of bottled water. Readers are informed of the safe level and told to look out for these brand.
However, the next two articles that appear on Google search tells us that some of these information is misleading and creates unnecessary fear for the public. The Tiktok video is generally biased against bottled water and its opinion is considered narrow. A broader opinion would be to also look into benefits and convenience that bottled water could provide.