The Internet is a vast mine of information; the problem is, not all of it is accurate. For journalists, accuracy is everything. The question of proving the authenticity of journalistic material is a seemingly an ever-increasing burden.

There has been much debate about which system for verifying social media reports is the most effective - is tweet first, ask questions later the best policy? ITV News recently fell foul of this tendency to immediately share information without authentication when it broadcast a piece of footage from a videogame believing it to be an IRA video.

The problem of verification of information is not simply a problem for journalists, though. The satirical news network The Onion recently posted a series of tweets claiming the US Congress had taken school children hostage for the sum of $12 Trillion. This caused confusion, uncertainty and outrage from some who felt the comedy group had gone a little too far. Of course, The Onion only ever publishes satire, but the confusion and the irate reactions to such material are quickly amplified and disseminated via the web.

The huge potentiality offered to news media by social media and social networks have already been widely discussed.

But does the overwhelming tide of information have any consequences on the credibility of online news?

Writing for (y)EU, the collective blog of the Web-team of the European Parliament, published an article addressing the issue. The article cited Edelman's media guru Steve Rubel who said that the word recognized as the Oxford Word of the Year 2009 - which was "unfriend" - marked the passage from the "democratization" of the internet to the "accreditation" era.

People don't know how to survive in the jungle of information online and they are turning to experts and specialists to guide them, says the article. If in 2006 the main source of trust was "people like me, my peer", in 2010 academic, experts, CEOS, NGOs and government representatives gained positions.

The article goes on noting that this is far form being the end of social media, of course, but that it means that to be credible and influential and to stand out from the wave it's necessary to build a sort of "digital authority".