Forget Everything You Know: Internet Skills Edition.

Week 4

This doesn’t apply to everyone of course, but if you are familiar with the CRAP test as a way to look for reliable sources on the web, this is probably for you. I am in no way an internet expert, and I credit all my newfound knowledge to the book, Verified, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg. 

Even though I was in high-school when every class had a set of chromebooks and online resources were required for every essay starting in the 8th grade, I didn’t have all the research skills I needed when starting college; and had failed multiple times at citing credible, or at least academic sources, in early papers. I barely knew how to find a reliable source until a professor gave an in-depth tutorial on how to use our university’s research database, and then I still struggled! Especially when conducting research for questions outside of academia. So, how do you fix that? How do you move beyond the CRAP test? 

Well, it’s pretty simple: leave the webpage. Fact-check! In their book, Verified, Caulfield and Wineburg break the source checking process into 4 steps: stop, investigate the source, find other coverage, trace the claim to the original source. And this all means get off the website!!! Even investigating the source requires looking elsewhere. Dont worry internet novice, I know just as well that the internet can be an overwhelming place, but just getting off the website and doing a quick search for more context can be so helpful in the long run. 

Some of the most helpful sections for me were in chapter 3 of Verified, discussing the use of keywords when searching. I am often the type of person who just types my question into google, question mark and all. But, even google tells us wording searches this way will not optimize results and it is better to just search words that are likely to be in the sources we are looking for. As Verified, tells us, “minor variations in how we phrase a search…can produce decidedly different results” (72). The authors exemplify this by adding the words “good” and “bad” to their queries. As expected, when the questions of morality are added google sways towards what you are asking for; it can tell if you are asking if something is good, you probably want to hear that it is. To eliminate this “inferred intent” and ensure your question is being answered to the best ability, it is best to neutralize your question into keywords. This way various sources that include the terms will pop up, instead of one side’s coverage. 

The more context, the better!