Sorry - previous post didn't contain the intended comments. The following is taken from a proposed work project that developed so far - and no further. It addresses issues of integrity and reliability, and suggests some ways of checking / verfiying / sanity checking sources, especially those on-line, even where they might be regarded as pretty sound. Hope it helps. Dominic Objectives: 1 To establish requirements for assessing 'news' or 'information' on-line sources such as to provide an authoritative weighting, or score, of reliability; 2 To determine the practical limits to any such scheme (e.g., what is news or information - what is the scope of coverage see 3); 3 To identify sources on-line (individuals, organisations, corporate, governmental, not for profit, etc.) and assign weightings; 4 To specify these requirements to form an RFP to automate, or semi-automate - i.e. without and without human intervention - the process(es); 5 To determine and establish any necessary infrastructure and network, and organisational stucture, to advocate, promote, implement and run such a scheme (existing or new); 6 To devise, prepare, publish, etc., guidance and training to enable all types of user to critically judge on-line news and other information sources (using an existing or new organisation - see 5). Resource Credibility: Teaching Critical Thinking and On-Line Media Literacy Skills Cable, radio, satellite and television news programming costs are in the millions of pounds/dollars etc. Add to these the costs of newspapers, magazines and other printed news publications, and the risks in some countries of libel or slander prosecutions, most publishers and journalists carefully check the veracity of the stories they investigate and write, and their facts, and will often take legal advice before publishing high risk stories. Other organisations, such as academic journals and universities use peer-review methods to make sure that what is published is well-founded. That does not stop dubious, error-ridden, or wholly false stories being reported, nor government (and other organisations) propaganda being printed. Academic journals, despite heavey weight co-authors, and peer review, are not immune from plagiarism (although not necessarily false information) and papers based on falsified data. However, by and large these publications have gained our confidence that they do take steps to ensure the material they publish is believeable. Their reputation is at stake if they do not maintain our confidence, and part of this is by ensuring that any mistakes or errors are corrected quickly and publicly as soon as possible. Whilst we may have a reasonable degree of confidence about the traditional sources of news, like any information source they may contain concious or unconscious bias. Some will self-evidently proclaim a particular political or party political identity. Others may seek to hide this, and purport to be an objective and impartial source. Others may be blatant or not so blatant mouthpieces of government, party, pressure group, lobby group, or other partial representative. How can we verify or be assured that what we see, hear, and read is accurate and credible, when the problem is magnified many fold on-line, as anyone can publish a website, in a few hours, and say anything they want - often without a credible basis for it. (I often claim online to be tall, thin, blonde, and gorgeous. But no one ever said wishful thinking wasn't allowed online.) My dress size aside, how can anyone know when they have a real and credible site or just someone's puffery? It's not easy. Online there is no stamp of approval for quality control or necessarily self-control. A site published by an anti-Semitic group that claims the Holocaust never occurred may look as real and sound as reliable as a scholarly university dissertation. The same story carried in a reputable off-line source will be subject to searching public and peer scrutiny - especially in the mass market - and the same may be the case when the same publication or publisher moves or extends on-line. Their reputation will likely call for the same standards to be applied to their on-line reporting and features. But how can we be sure, particularly when sites may look familiar and reliable, but are not what they seem. Or when reputable channels rely on on-line sources that are on closer scrutiny absolute nonsense? Teaching and learning how to evaluate the credibility of a site is an important part of using the resources available via the Internet whether in connection with schoolwork, normal 'day to day' life, or in professional and work life. Essentially, it's teaching all users to be good information consumers. Whenever we find a website, we should think about the purpose of the site. Is it designed to sell something? If it's designed by anyone who sells anything, you have to assume that it's designed to at least indirectly promote its products or services. Any site that is designed to sell something should be approached as critically as any offline promotion or advertisement. However, the absence of any apparent commercial, sales, or advertisement does not of itself mean that a site can be relied on. It may appear to be objective, but promote solely one point of view. It may purport to weigh up the competing arguments, or be an unbiased assessment, but in practice back one side or another. Once we understand the site's point of view, we can evaluate what they are saying more effectively. One of the first legal rules we should learn is caveat emptor-buyer beware. Learning how to use critical judgment when reviewing a website is easy. Applying this to what appear to be (and indeed may be) authoritative news sites - with or without any commercial flavor - is not necessarily as easy. Neverthless, the same or similar tests can be applied. The information gathered from a website should be accurate and current. If there is a bias, the website's bias should be obvious, and the authority of its writers should be set forth. Here are a few things that users should be checking when they visit a site to read news, review articles and features, read opinion and editorial columns, or conduct research: # Who's the author or website creator, and what's their authority, or claimed authority? Is it written by known journalists (but note that not even Pulitzer prize winners have always been what they seem)? While many won't tell you that they are unqualified to make the statements they make at the site, they leave clues. What are the credentials offered at the site for the site authors. If the person states that he is a professor at Outer Siberia University, you should check for links to the university. Has the person listed awards? If so, are there links to the entities that gave the awards so you can check? Is this person a published author? If so, does Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Borders have his book listed online? Search for other sites that reference this person. Not everyone is an award-winning professor and published author, but most good sources are cited elsewhere online. # What's the bias of the site? Whose points of view aren't covered? Bias isn't necessarily bad, as long as it is clear to the site viewer. Remember that everyone has their bias, but some are more significant than others. Is this a site that performs "unbiased" reviews of advertisers? If so, have they disclosed that fact to the readers? Are they a nonprofit entity with a particular mission or purpose? Where was the site created? Is it from an international group that might have a country or culture bias? Is it a U.S. site which might have a U.S. bias? Often, you can detect bias by reading closely. The good sites will identify their mission. Think about who is creating the content, whose points of view are included, and whose are excluded. Students should try to achieve balance by including different biases and points of view when they do their research. # How current is this information? Does the page, report, or feature have a publication date - or perhaps a "last updated" date notation? Archive news materials should be clearly dated for the point at which they were published, and NOT be changed. Any changes such as annotations, links, or addendums subsequent to that date should be clearly identified. A current news site can expected to be updated regularly, with new stories or further enhancements appearing at least daily. It will depend on the nature of the site. For example, if it is largely a clone of a printed (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) publication it may not change at all between publication dates. If it claims to be electronic or special on-line edition, you'd expect to see hourly or perhaps more frequent changes with 'breaking' news. If the site doesn't contain a "last updated" date, look to see if there's a "recent additions" or "what's new" section of the site, and see how often it is changed. You want to make sure the content is updated often, since it tells you two things: that the site gets regular attention, and that it contains recent information. A good news site site is updated regularly. If you can't tell when a site was last updated, send an e-mail to the webmaster at "webmaster @[the name of the site]." Ask how often the site is updated and the date it was last updated. # Are the news stories well-written and, if a feature, well and consistently argued? Depending on the explicit or known bias of the organisation or site, there may well be consistency in the stories carried, and the general political 'look and feel'. More 'objective' news organisations may carry articles and features that are apparently contradictory, and encourage readers to contribute to a debate - both on and off line. Look for the themes of a site and the stories and articles acrreied. Are they presenting alternate and opposing views? Are there links to additional resources, or related stories. Have you compared it to the same story or topic carried by other news sites? If, for example during the Iraq War, stories are pooled (i.e. one report is made by one reporter and then shared by either news services such as AP, Reuters, or UPI, or by several newspapers, this should be clear. If a report appears subject to censorship, this should also be made clear. # What have they linked to? Do the links work? Do they link to credible sites, and do credible sites link to them? Are the links correctly described? Are they current? Who else links to them? Again, is the link information updated and accurate, or do the links not work anymore? There may be real experts in judging the credibility of resources, but it does not have to be a well designed or elaborate hoax or con to fool some of the brightest brains around - cf. the Sunday Times, AJP Taylor, and the Hitker Diaries. Using your own critical faculties anjd common sense may be the best test, using some of these commonsense approaches. --- erickaakcire.1532473@bloglines.com wrote:
I teach a public speaking & rhetoric class in college - largely to sophomore pharmacy majors, and I'm grading the first batch of speeches which are on a topic of the student's choosing but must be focused on social science. I've got about 15% of the speeches that uncritically cite the Wikipedia - clearly treating it as just another encyclopedia without knowledge of how it is written - or at least no mention of this. (I thought I mentioned what the Wikipedia is in at least one section, but perhaps not.)
What I'm doing is explaining what it is and that it's a good place to look for background info but that they need to cite the original resources to use the material in their speeches. I'd also encourage them to do this for any encyclopedic sources. I could think of scenarios where it might be acceptable to cite the Wikipedia as proof of norms or accepted beliefs.
So next week I'm going to discuss this with my classes along with more on source credibility generally.
Any suggestions? How have you handled this? (I'm particularly interested in responses from other Wikipedia contributors & supporters.)
Thanks, Ericka Menchen Trevino
Graduate Student http://blog.erickamenchen.net _______________________________________________ The Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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