TODAY

1) Political Cartoons – An opener2) Research and you, Part I: Veracity of a

Source3) The example4) Bubbl.us Time! 5) “And my topic is…”6) Homework

TO COMBINE…

…all our rhetorical analysis work so far and to add an element, today I offer you this, a political cartoon I saw this week:

AND NOW

Let’s look at a few of yours.

What did people bring in?

RESEARCH

Traditionally, a project like the one we are about to undertake would involve a huge stack of books. But this is new era, and we don’t generally do research that way anymore. Much of your research will likely be done using this thing we call the magical super-happy interwebz.

But this introduces an interesting wrinkle: the internet theoretically represents total democracy, freedom at its finest. So if anyone can post… you have to check forthe veracity of a source.

Veracity: from m-w.com

1) devotion to the truth : TRUTHFULNESS

2) power of conveying or perceiving truth

3) conformity with truth or fact : ACCURACY

4) something true <makes lies sound like veracities>

SO THE QUESTION…

…becomes this: what out there is true and what out there isn’t?

I used the word veracity because you’ll hear politicians tossing it around this week. But what I really mean is that you must find out if a source is reliable or not before you go incorporating it into your paper.

Sometimes, bad sites are really obvious.

QUICK ANALYSIS:

THIS SITE IS… BOGUS.

SADLY

…not everyone will telegraph their Ethos for us.

So things to remember:1. ANYONE with either some money or some form of

subsidized access (a local library, a school, a friend) can put a website on the internet. There’s no gate-keeper.

2. There are, in this world, people who lie.3. There are also, in this world, people who are ignorant.4. Notice I said “ignorant” and not “stupid.” To

be ignorant is to not know. There are alsoidiots, who know better but do stupidthings on the internet.

LET’S TEST A SITE

Let’s say we’re going to talk about great political speeches as part of our Inquiry 3 project, tracing a line from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to George H.W. Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light” and on to… whatever we consider to be the best speech so far this year.

We start with Google, because we’re cool like that. And we type in “Martin Luther King.”

CLICK!

OMG! It’s

martinlutherking.org!

This has to be legit,

right?

W. T. F. (what’s the facts?)

Down the page, we find this, the attribution.The first rule of internet research: figure out who posted/made what you’re looking at.

Hosted by Stormfront? Hmmm… that’s not a nameI have ever heard. Oh, it’s a link! GLORIOUS! Let’s click it.

I sort of liked 2005

ON THE REAL…

I looooove Google. I do. And Google knows, because they’re watching me type this, archiving it, and will show it to people later.

But Google is an aggregator, which means that when people search for something, it tabulates that into the totals and ranks the sites most often clicked when searching for a word. Big nerd stuff= martinlutherking.org gets a lot of hits, so it’s high on the page.

Buuuuuuuuut…

Martinlutherking.org is owned by a group of hate-spewing Neo-Nazis who wanted David Duke, a known member of the Klu Klux Klan, to be President of the United States.

I shouldn’t have to ask, but I will.

Anyone think they’re a good source for information on Dr. King?

But that was on the first page of Google’s search.

At one point, a few years ago, it wasTHE TOP OF THE LIST.

So be skeptical. Always.

Don’t do bad research. It’s okay– in fact for this project to a degree it will be imperative– to use the internet to do research. It’s a big ol’ tool, perhaps the single best research technology since the written word itself.

But verify. Know who wrote what you see, who posted it, when, from where, on behalf of who. Don’t trust Phillip Morris for facts about cigarette smoking. Don’t trust The Egg Council for information about eggs and cholesterol. Don’t trust Neo-Nazis at all. That last one is just IMHO. But don’t trust Neo-Nazis for info about an African American leader.

Why you might not

trust Wikipedia

TRANSITION SLIDE

Go here:

HOMEWORK

Go here: https://me.lib.muohio.edu/ . Login, and do it. It’s a library tutorial. We’ll talk more about its content next class.

Tumblr question: What is your Inquiry 3 topic? I’ll be holding you to this.

Tumblr prompt: the first Presidential debate is Wednesday night. I won’t force you to watch it (you should, though). I will ask you to do this, though: if you don’t’ watch,somehow use your ninja research powersto find out if your topic was mentionedand write a summary of what each personsaid about it.