A little different than the later class.

2. TODAY
1) Political Cartoons – An opener
2) Research and you, Part I: Veracity of a
Source
3) The example
4) Bubbl.us Time!
5) “And my topic is…”
6) Homework

3. 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:

4. AND NOW
Let’s look at a few of yours.
What did people bring in?

5. 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 for
the veracity of a source.

6. 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>

7. 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.

10. QUICK ANALYSIS:
THIS SITE IS… BOGUS.

11. 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 also
idiots, who know better but do stupid
things on the internet.

12. 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.”

15. CLICK!
OMG! It’s
martinlutherking.org!
This has to be legit,
right?

18. 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 name
I have ever heard. Oh, it’s a link! GLORIOUS!
Let’s click it.

21. I sort of liked 2005

22. 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.

23. 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 was
THE TOP OF THE LIST.

24. 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.

25. Why you might not
trust Wikipedia

26. TRANSITION SLIDE

27. Go here:

28. 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 powers
to find out if your topic was mentioned
and write a summary of what each person
said about it.