Internet Research

Finding Materials on the Internet

Internet search engines are powerful tools for delivering easily accessible sources of
information in the research process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1
Identify ways to use search engines to find information on the Internet

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 If you find yourself with an unfamiliar topic, you can orient yourself by
conducting a general, preliminary overview search using Internet search
engines.
 Don’t limit yourself to just one search engine; Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and
AOL Search comprise the top five search engines in the U.S. and each do
certain types of searches better than others.
 Use Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT to refine and specify your
search queries for accurate research results.

Key Terms

 keyword: To tag with keywords, as for example to facilitate searching.

 search engine: an application that searches for, and retrieves, data based on
some criteria, especially one that searches the Internet for documents
containing specified words

Using the Internet As a Research Source

As you gather research for your speech, you’ll want to have a variety of sources from
which to compile supporting evidence and facts. With the advent of digital archiving,
social media, and open-source education, it’s easier than ever before to find
information on the Internet.

Using the Internet: With such widespread accessibility, the Internet allows you to conduct research from
just about anywhere.

Why Use the Internet?

 The Internet is pervasive, easily accessible, and continually updated. It only makes
sense to capitalize on this ever-evolving technology as a resource for your speech
research.

In addition to convenience and accessibility, the Internet allows you to access

resources to which you may not have the physical means to get previously. You
might not be able to just hop on a plane to Paris and see DaVinci’s La
Jaconde (more commonly known as the Mona Lisa), but thanks to the Internet, you
can now browse the hundreds of works at Le Louvre right from the convenience of
your laptop.
2 The Internet is also an excellent way to familiarize or orient yourself with an
unfamiliar speech topic. While you might not be able to cite every informational
source you find, using the Internet in your research process is a fast way to get
yourself familiar with the basics of your speech topic, thesis, or key supporting points
and arguments.

The Art Of the Search Query

When getting started with most Internet research, the first thing you’ll do is open up
your Internet browser and open to a search engine. While Google may dominate the
search engine market, recognize that Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL Search round out
the top five most popular search engines in the United States. Other popular search
engines include Wolfram Alpha and Instagrok.com. Using different search engines
may yield different results, so don’t limit yourself to just one search engine.
Additionally, some search engines excel at certain types of information and searches
more than others.

Internet information, particularly of a certain quality or standard, can be organized in

other ways besides word choice and prominence (as attended by global search
engines). Some information may also require further search skills to retrieve. A
familiarity with midpoints like directories, “invisible” databases and an attentiveness
to further types of organization may reveal the key to finding missing information. A
thesaurus, for example, may prove critical to connecting information organized under
the business term “staff loyalty” to information addressing the preferred nursing term
“personnel loyalty” (MeSH entry for Medline by the [US] National Library of
Medicine).

While each search engine may have specific search query shorthand, almost all
major search engines function by using Boolean logic and Boolean search operators.
Boolean logic symbolically represents relationships between entities and uses three
key search operators. These operators help you form your search query:

 AND: The AND operator connects two or more terms to retrieve information
that matches all of those terms. If, for example, you were searching for
information about the freedom of speech in the United States, you might
search for “freedom AND United States. “
 OR: The OR operator searches for information that includes at least one of
the keywords included in your query. If you were researching on court cases
 about freedom of speech, you might search for “freedom of speech OR
amendment. “
 NOT: The NOT operator excludes any keywords following the operator and
retrieves the appropriate information excluding those terms. If you wanted to
find out more about free speech in schools but not anything related to Supreme
Court cases, you might search for “freedom of speech NOT Supreme Court. “

Types of Material on the Internet

The Internet can provide you with a wealth and variety of resources for your research
3 process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

List types of sources that can be found using the Internet

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 The Internet is a constantly expanding virtual library with over a million

terabytes of data and information to be found and millions more gigabytes
added daily.
 The Internet can provide you with a variety of sources including: scholarly
databases and journals, online encyclopedias, books, and videos.
 Even social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook can provide you
with unique and comprehensive sources of citizen journalism.

Key Terms

 citizen journalism: Independent reporting, often by amateurs on the scene of

an event, and disseminated via new media.
 database: A structured collection of data, typically organized to model
relevant aspects of reality (for example, the availability of rooms in hotels), in a
way that supports processes requiring this information (for example, finding a
hotel with vacancies).
 peer review: The scholarly process whereby manuscripts intended to be
published in an academic journal are reviewed by independent researchers
(referees) to evaluate the contribution, i.e. the importance, novelty and
accuracy of the manuscript’s contents.
 Types of Material on the Internet

Virtual Library: The Internet is like an endless virtual library where thousands of new sources of
information are added every second of the day.

The Internet is like an endless virtual library where thousands of new sources of
information are added every second of the day. That being said, there are many
different types of information to be found across the vast expanse of the Internet.

4 Scholarly Journals and Databases

The most common source of reliable, credible information you will find on the
Internet is through scholarly journals and databases. These academic, peer
reviewed collections provide you with extensive reports, case studies, articles and
research studies to help bolster your research process. Most online scholarly
journals are categorized by certain subjects, professions, and fields of study and
allow you to seek out the most targeted information possible. Many online journals
and databases will only let you preview an article abstract or summary, requiring a
paid per-article or subscription fee to view the complete article. However, many
college and university libraries have arrangements such that you don’t have to pay to
view articles. Check with your library to see if they can get you a copy of complete
articles that you can’t access online. Popular online scholarly databases include:

 Academic Search Premier

 EBSCO Host
 Entrez-PubMed
 JSTOR
 Lexus Nexus Academic Search
 Project MUSE
 ProQuest

Online Encyclopedias

Several major encyclopedia publishers have online versions of their materials. Some
charge an access fee to view full entries. In 2001, Wikipedia sought to change this
by creating an open-source encyclopedia edited and curated by the Internet. With
over 23 million articles, entries in Wikipedia are collaboratively written by volunteers
around the globe. Because of this, the quality of writing may not make it the most
reliable or accurate source of information. However, if you’re just looking to get a
handle on basic ideas about your speech topic, Wikipedia is a great first source to
check out. Also, make sure to click through and investigate a Wikipedia’s article’s
references list to find other, more quality and reliable, sources of information on the
same subject.
 Video

With over 48 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute, YouTube has
compiled more videos across every two week span (8 years of video per day) than
total number of years that motion pictures have existed (117 years in 2012). Video
can provide you a rich, visual depth to your Internet research, providing you with
first-hand accounts, video tutorials and diaries, and citizen journalism.

Online Books

5 Online tools such as Project Gutenberg and Google Books now allow you to access
full books from the comfort of your Internet browser. Project Gutenberg is an open-
source collective of full texts now in the public domain. Google Books offers both full
texts and partial previews on millions of books. Because both of these resources
index the content of each full text, they are searchable to find the exact content and
information you need.

The Impact of Social Media

While many would dismiss the credibility and reliability of information garnered from
social media sources, both Twitter and Facebook can provide intrinsic value to your
Internet search. Most mainstream journalism outlets can no longer keep up social
media’s immediacy of information sharing, making some into a form of citizen
journalism that provides real-time, first-person accounts of world events. If you were
preparing a speech about the Arab Spring or the 2012 Presidential Election, social
media would be invaluable to your research tracking populist sentiment and
eyewitness accounts in real-time reporting.

Evaluating Material from the Internet

Given the widespread authorship of the Internet, carefully evaluate all Internet
sources for credibility, reliability, bias, and accuracy.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Evaluate online sources to assure that they are credible, reliable, and accurate

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 Failure to accurately evaluate your Internet sources leaves you and your
speech subject to intense scrutiny and questions of credibility.
 Consider the “age, depth, author and money” of every source you use from
the Internet. The ADAM approach can help you determine whether or not you
should proceed with using a particular source.
  Looking at a website’s top-level domain can give you clues about its reliability.
Generally speaking, it’s safe to trust information from sites with domain names
that end in.edu,.gov and.ngo and sometimes.org.
 When using and evaluating social media sources, researchers should be
aware of sites that have a poor reputation for checking facts or moderating
content.

Key Terms

 credibility: The objective and subjective components of the believability of a

6 source or message.

Evaluating Internet Material

The biggest advantage of using the Internet as a research tool is the ease with which
you can find information. The biggest disadvantage, then, is parsing through the
bevy of information to find credible, reliable, accurate information. The burden of
filtering truth from fiction in your Internet searches lies solely with you as the
researcher.

What is Search Engine Bias ?

The first thing to understand about using the Internet as a source of information is
that search engines are biased gateways to the information you seek. This bias may
be driven by proprietary search algorithms dictated by corporate sponsors, ad
revenue, and even politics, thus affecting the type of search results your queries will
display. Understand that just because you’re searching for something on a popular
search engine, it doesn’t mean you’re getting the full spectrum of available
information about your search query.

Essential Questions to Ask When Evaluating Internet Material

When searching for reliable information on the Internet, there are several questions
you should ask yourself with each source of information you find. This may seem
tedious, but you don’t want your thesis to be undone by someone questioning the
credibility of your research, or worse, you as a speaker.

The ADAM Approach

The ADAM approach is an acronym to help you remember the four most important
things to consider when evaluating the quality of your materials found via the
Internet:

 Age: How recent is the data or information presented in your source? When
was the website last updated? Use only the most current information you can
find.
  Depth: Does your material go in depth with your subject or merely cover the
basics? Are the details from scholarly or academic sources? Look for sources
that go in depth rather than provide you with just an overview of your subject.
 Author: Who wrote your source? What are their credentials? What makes
them an authoritative expert on this subject? What biases might they have? Try
to seek out impartial, authoritative experts when you can.
 Money: Who funds the website? Is the website trying to sell you anything?
Who advertises at the website? Where else might this website be advertised?
Again, you’ll want to seek out as many impartial sources as you can and you
want to make sure that you fully investigate the transparency of any agenda a
7 website might have.

Domain Credibility

Sometimes the clue to a website’s authenticity and credibility is within the actual
website address itself. The following top-level domains (TLD) can give you an idea of
how reliable and accurate the information may be:

 .com: The most popular TLD worldwide, originally used by commercial

entities, now a de facto standard on the Internet. Reliability and credibility not
always guaranteed.
 .edu: Only schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions
can use this TLD, often indicating a reliable source of information.
 .gov: Only government organizations may use this TLD. Guaranteed to be
both accurate and credible.
 .org: Originally reserved for non-profit organizations (NPO) or non-
government organizations (NGO), this TLD can be used by commercial
entities. In 2012, a.ngo TLD has been added to the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a domain extension.
 .net: Primarily used by internet service providers. Depending on what kind of
information you’re looking for, sites with a.net TLD may or may not provide you
with any useful information.

Social Media and Multimedia Sources

Audio, video, and multimedia materials that have been recorded, then broadcast,
distributed, or archived by a reputable party may also meet the necessary criteria to
be considered reliable sources. Like text sources, media sources must be produced
by a reliable third party and be properly cited. Additionally, an archived copy of the
media must exist. It is convenient, but by no means necessary, for the archived copy
to be accessible via the Internet.

The rapid growth of social media and its ability to disseminate relevant information to
multiple users based on shared interests and relationships has increased its
importance in the world of Internet research. Wikipedia, one of the most popular wiki
 websites in the world, relies on scholarly material and crowdsourcing to provide
accurate, targeted, and comprehensive information to the masses.

When using social media sources, researchers should be aware of sites that have a
poor reputation for checking facts or for moderating content. Such sources also
attract publishers expressing extremist views, promoting products, or posting false
and inaccurate information.

For that reason, self-published media—whether e-books, newsletters, open wikis,

blogs, social networking pages, Internet forum postings, or tweets—should be used
with caution. Self-published material may be acceptable when it has been produced
8 by an established expert on the topic at hand, and whose work in the relevant field
has been previously published by reliable third-party publications.