Belated Homework #3
Which search tool did you use in Part II and why? What evaluation criteria did you use to choose the 2 websites in Part II? What evaluation criteria are important to you when using the Internet?
Before I start searching, I asked myself what kind of information exactly I was looking for. I was looking for two articles about Obama’s health care reforms, one article had to be in favor of the reforms, the other one had to be against them. So, I was just looking for opinions, and preferably well argued ones. One can find people’s opinions in blogs, forums, newspapers or televisions websites. I chose mass media websites because I deemed that opinions on that subject would be better argued there. I was not asked to find articles written by prestigious people or politicians, however I made the decision to choose articles written by journalists. Journalists are investigators in some way, they are good at raising questions and giving arguments to support their point of view. In addition, even if we can’t believe 100% of what is said on TV and radios or written in newspapers, The Washington Examiner and MSNBC are famous and serious medias, I had no particular reason to feel suspicious about the content of their site. In addition journalists want to remain credible to keep their job and their reputation, so their arguments are certainly founded.
It’s not exactly the kind of information I’d search using databases, I was not looking for something precise that happened in the past, neither for anything related to science nor to economy , I just wanted to know what some people think about something very actual, so Google News was appropriate .
When using the internet , and of course depending on what kind of information we’re looking for, it’s recommended to evaluate:
- if the information is reliable and the source it comes from is serious because the quality of the information depends on it,
- if the information is credible, accurate, reasonable, and supported by other reliable sources.
Homework #5
Do you think you are finding different types of information? Are you finding more scholarly material in any of the search engines than others? Explain your answer using examples from your searches.
Yes, definitely, the information provided by the four sources is not the same. In fact there are 2 kinds of information. Bing.com and yahoo.com displays online casinos websites on top of their lists, Yahoo.com includes some sites containing information about the risks and effects of gambling. Whereas lii.org and deepdyve.com provide non commercial information about gambling, like gambling and society, gambling and law, gambling and economy, gambling and history, gambling and culture, gambling and health… It makes no doubt these last two sources provide much more scholarly material than bing or yahoo.
The concept of the Invisible Web is difficult. We’re interested in when you think it is appropriate to search for information in sources besides Google. For example, what would use (invisible web vs general purpose search engines) to search for these topics:
Defend your choice using concepts from the readings.
I would use a general purpose search engine like Google or Bing to buy a car or to look for a recipe, because it’s the kind of common requests these search engines perform with success, but I would use the Invisible Web to search information on the subject of global dimming or topics in Science, because I have much more chances to access the most appropriate databases with scholarly material and full texts, publications or articles. We’ve seen previously that, according to Wendy Boswell, “most of the information on the Invisible Web is maintained by academic institutions, and has a higher quality than search engine results”, consequently I’ll give more credential to these sources.
News
I get most of my news from the internet, I visit the Gawker, NYTimes, I read newspaper from Slovakia called SME. My mom also sends me a Czech magazine called Reflex. It is probably one of the best magazines out there. It talks about politics, showbusiness, world issues, movies, theater, music, etc. I read also the New Yorker and their blogs. I don’t have TV anymore because I spent too much time with it and I had to cut that.
I try to teach myself some skills with programming and cameras and many times I simply don’t have the time to read whole NYTimes daily and I don’t think I’m being ignorant. To only consume news and have opinions about everything that is going around the world is, to me, not that important after all.
I do like ‘knowing stuff’ but I think to actually engage and do something is more important that being only the consumer or spectator.
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