Attention, crap detection and effective writing.

 

In our Digital Writing class at Old Dominion University, we’ve covered several topics in the short first week. Those topics included how we give our attention to one or multiple ideas, the constant competition for our attention in an online world and how we can become conscious are regain focus when our mind wonders. We also looked at the valuable skill of crap detection, it is crap detection, and my own mistakes is the past that I will focus on.

I have taken several online classes in the past that required research and, I can identify with anyone who feels the go-to online search engine provided way too much information. I made several mistakes as I searched for the info and as I chose what I used in my final work.

Randall McClure makes several great recommendations to make better use of Google and Wikipedia in his article Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills. The steps are pretty simple and become easier with a bit of practice.

1. Use Wikipedia to gain a general sense of subject and learn terms and sources

2. Bounce what was learned in Google

3. Use quotation marks around your “search term”

4. Search Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

5. Improve the currency of results with “recent results or “since 2000” on Google Scholar

6. Use the university or college library database, they are online so don’t let the trip discourage you.

7. If available, search a general academic database such as Academic Search Premier, Proquest Complete, Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe, or CQ Researcher

8. Limit the search in step 7 by year and “full text”

The term “echo chamber” describes the common tendency to look for those sources that “echo” the writer’s beliefs (Rheingold, 2012).  I imagine this as a jury that chooses to be in the courtroom only when one side, the prosecution or the defense presents “their” facts and it is something writers must avoid. When using news articles, globalvoices.org provides articles from around the world.

“Lateral reading” is the practice of conducting research on the sources being used. When looking for information we would not walk around a busy hub like a park and automatically trust information random people provided a random subject. Anyone can write a research paper, post edited videos or maintain a blog… joke intended. 

We learned to be skeptical and put our sources and information through a CRAAP (Credibility, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose) filter (Driscoll, 2022). Is the source trustworthy? where is their authority derived from?  Are they possibly biased? such as research on the impact of oil leaks on the environment conducted and publicized by an oil company. Is the information current, the writer might not have had the most current information, if we could go back enough, we could find an expert who used the best information at the time but believed the sun revolved around earth.

While information is more readily available now, we need to apply the lessons most of us already use to decide who will get our attention, what info may not be accurate and what information we will relay to others.

Do you know of instances where a credible source failed to properly screen information and resulted in embarrassment, or the wrong information being put out to a wide audience? Does this change how easily you have trusted online sources in the past?

Driscoll, D., Heise, M., Stewart, M., & Lowe,M. (2022). Writing spaces : readings on writing Volume 4. West Lafayette, Indiana ; Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press

Rheingold, H. (2012). Net smart : how to thrive online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.