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24 Analyzing Sources

3.24-a Avoiding Misinformation, Disinformation, and Dismediation

by BARRY MAUER AND JOHN VENECEK

Good scholarship protects us from misinformation (wrong information), disinformation (intentionally deceptive information), and dismediation (intentionally deceptive efforts to discredit reliable channels of information).  We all know the phrase “Fake News”. Wrong and deceptive information is rampant on public forums and on poor quality media platforms. You should not rely on such sources for factual claims (unless you are a pro who can independently verify the information you get from them – and even then, you will need to explain why you are using such sources instead of scholarly ones).

The institutions that support scholarship, such as granting agencies, peer-reviewed journals, libraries, and so on, rely on gatekeepers to keep bad information out and allow good information in. Of course, no system is foolproof, so we need to maintain our own critical abilities. The scholarly system, when it works well, polices itself. If a work of misinformation or disinformation gets published, distributed, and archived, we count on other scholars to identify it and demand a retraction or correction.

We don’t want to be too strict about information sources though. There is a lot of good information on public websites. Have you ever learned how to fix a broken pipe from YouTube? That’s not considered scholarly, and yet it was good information. Some scholars dismiss academic publications that are new, or don’t have illustrious board members, but this runs the danger of information becoming stagnant and old fashioned.  Just don’t be TOO trusting.

Discernment

As readers, we always use critical thinking when we research. Gullibility, or trusting too easily, is a problem because it means we are more likely to accept misinformation, disinformation, or dismediation. But we can go too far in the other direction and end up in cynicism – not trusting at all – which leads us to reject reliable sources.

The internet has enormous amounts of information that is true and useful. Refusing to accept it because it’s on the internet is as problematic as accepting everything that’s on the internet. Your job is to practice discernment: when to trust and when not to trust. Discernment requires care, effort, and most importantly, practice.

Our blind spots – gaps in our knowledge – present obstacles to discernment. These gaps make us vulnerable to the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is when “people suffering the most among their peers from ignorance or incompetence fail to recognize just how much they suffer from it.”[1] . In layman’s terms: sometimes the person who knows the least about a topic thinks they know the most about it.

Researchers need to be humble enough to question their assumptions by seeing what others are saying about a source, identifying the unknowns: “gaps in knowledge may go unrecognized in everyday life because people fail to have outside agents hovering over them” (254).

 Think About It:

  1. Why do we need gatekeepers in our disciplines?
  2. What efforts should you, as a researcher, make to ensure source credibility?
  3. How significant are the problems of disinformation, misinformation, and dismediation in our society lately?
  4. What was the most important lesson you learned from this module? What point was confusing or difficult to understand?

 

Evaluating the source: a rubric

Note the rubric for evaluating scholarly resources below. Use the rubric as you are evaluating the sources you find.

Above Satisfactory (A/B) Satisfactory (C) Below Satisfactory (D/F)
Authority The author(s) of identified sources are credible and their findings appear in a peer-reviewed academic journal or a book from a respected academic press. The author(s) may or may not be credible. Not every source is from a peer- reviewed academic journal or press. The author(s) lack credibility. Sources are not published in a peer-reviewed academic journal or press.
Warranted Bias Correctly distinguishes author(s) who avoid unwarranted bias against good evidence and arguments, and who use warranted bias against bad behaviors or false claims, from authors who don’t. Mostly distinguishes author(s) who avoid unwarranted bias against good evidence and arguments, and who use warranted bias against bad behaviors or false claims, from authors who don’t. Does not distinguish author(s) who avoid unwarranted bias against good evidence and arguments, and who use warranted bias against bad behaviors or false claims, from authors who don’t.
Grammar/ Mechanics MLA or APA was used correctly while finding trustworthy sources. Sentence structure as well as grammar, punctuation, and capitalization were used correctly with minimal to no errors. Generally, MLA or APA format is used correctly while finding trustworthy sources. However, there are some mistakes. Some awkward sentences appear as well as some grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors. There are multiple incorrect sentence structures used while finding trustworthy sources. It also lacks the use of correct MLA or APA format. There are significant errors in grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.

3.24-b Credible vs. Non-Credible Sources

When researching for materials for your assignment, always use reliable, or credible, sources that contain factual or truthful information. Credible sources contain information that has been fact-checked and cross-referenced for validity and include tertiary educational publications and websites, government websites, and some registered and well-known organizations. Non-Credible sources include personal blogs, social media, personal webpages, biased webpages, and many commercial media outlets. They are often inherently biased and based on personal opinion rather than peer-reviewed research.

Social media may alert you to the existence of a topic, but you will want to go directly to the source to get the most accurate and reliable information available.

Reliable vs Academic Sources

While reliable sources are good for gaining background information on an assignment topic and to increase your overall understanding, academic, peer-reviewed sources are required for academic assessments. You may cite a reliable source if you are scrutinizing the way events or people are represented in the media or if you are specifically required to use them for an assessment; however, academic sources are generally what are required in the marking criteria of assessments.

An academic source is well-researched, written by an academic, usually peer-reviewed, and published in an academic journal or book by a reputable publisher. Peer review means exactly that; it has been reviewed by other academics, often in the same field of study, to ensure that it is of the highest quality of research and writing.

When in doubt, use Ulrich’s Periodical directory to make sure your information is considered academic.

Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory is an international bibliographic database that provides access to over 300,000 publications including peer-reviewed journal articles, academic magazines and newspapers, and other serial publications that is available in both print via Bell Library or online at https://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com/login  

 

Credibility of resources

Internet research is an incredible resource, but not all the sources you find using Google will be credible. Most of your research should come from the library databases, but you can also find scholarly articles using Google/Google Scholar.

Now along with finding information, you must gain experience in understanding what you have found. Not everything on the internet is a webpage; not everything is credible! The old “It’s on the internet, so it must be true” thinking has gone out of the window.

You must be a serious thinker and determine if what you have found is credible and should be taken as a fact and used in your work. Remember, you are joining a conversation, even as a listener, when you research on the internet. And as in a conversation with others f2f, some people like to troll others and tell lies.

So, how do you tell what you have? Well, a lot of it is trial and error. But, remember earlier when I said you should make friends with your Research Librarian? Yeaaaaaah, they can help. Your professor can also help. Make sure you are asking the people in authority about the sources you find so you can shorten the time needed to learn how to tell a good source from a bad one. There are also a series of video links below that can help with that process.

There are a lot of different ways to begin getting comfortable with information. This book has covered how to get comfortable with information in many ways.

These readings and videos provide extra foundational information on how to find and evaluate source information. These are valuable skills for life in and out of university. And, they take practice. Which is why we spend so much time on them.

Read:

  1. How to Judge Online Information
  2. Scholarly Articles vs Trade vs Popular Articles
  3. How do I Know if it is a Web Source or a Scholarly Article?
  4. How to Find Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Articles.

Watch: 

 

Primary/secondary/tertiary sources  

Let’s pretend for a moment that your history professor asks you to write a research essay using only primary documents. Well, what does that mean! It’s important to realize that even when you are doing a search in the library databases, not all the information is the same. When we talk about sources, we have to consider how close to the event these sources are. They come in different categories, but the most common are Primary, Secondary and Tertiary sources. This simply means how many degrees of separation they are from the actual event.

Primary: A primary source provides direct or firsthand perspective related to an event, object, person, work of art, or idea or concept. Examples may include historical and legal documents, eyewitness accounts, experiment results, statistical data, pieces of creative works, speeches, original communications, interviews.

Example: The Declaration of Independence is a primary document.

When would you use this type of source: Primary sources allow you direct access to a given topic. This allows you to interpret or analyze the material with less interference from other people’s preferences, biases, or quirks.

 

Secondary: A secondary source is something written about a primary source. They analyze, explain, interpret, discuss, and examine an original work.  Examples may include books, dictionaries and encyclopedias, articles, reviews, commentaries, documentaries, theses and dissertations.

Example: A chapter in a book about American history that explains the Declaration of independence and tells us what it means.

When would you use this type of source: Secondary sources allow for greater coverage with a wider range of perspectives on any given topic.

 

Tertiary: Tertiary sources are single collections of both primary and secondary sources. Examples may include: handbooks, almanacs, dictionaries and encyclopedias, guides, manuals, indexes, bibliographies, databases, websites….

Example: an encyclopedia entry about the Declaration of Independence that is giving us a broad overview using primary and secondary sources as their own sources. 

When would you use this type of source: Tertiary sources are a great way to get a broad overview of a given topic.

 

 

 

CC LICENSED CONTENT INCLUDED

Avoiding Misinformation, Disinformation, and Dismediation Copyright © 2021 by Barry Mauer and John Venecek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Burke, Kenneth. “Burke’s ‘Unending Conversation’ Metaphor.” Texas Tech University. Texas Tech U, 18 May 2011. Web. 27 May 2011. See < https://english.ttu.edu/kairos/2.1/features/brent/burke.html

Composing Ourselves and Our World,  Provided by: the authors. License: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This chapter contains excerpts from:

MULTIMEDIA CONTENT INCLUDED

Chasejin. (6 OCT 2015).  Difference between a website and a webpage. Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6DIH7b82Qw

University of Galway. (15 DEC 2017). What is the difference between a journal and a journal article? Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF4YmLPExBg

Libncsu. (1 May 2014). Peer review in 3 minutes. Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOCQZ7QnoN0

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