Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā In writing this research paper, I found it quite difficult to simply choose a topic. What do I choose? What is my stance? What direction do I go in? When finally deciding upon the topic of misinformation, I realized after days of research that the topic is just too broad so I narrowed it down to āmisinformation across social mediaā. There is an abundance of information regarding this, which is obviously beneficial to writing a paper but at the same time somewhat overwhelming. I needed to further narrow my topic in order to create a stance on what I felt surrounding the issue. So I organized the paper around my beliefs regarding what needs to be done to reduce the misinformation problem. I feel I did fairly well in supporting my claims in some areas but fell short in others.Ā Navigating the online library was a challenge and drawing supportive information from peer reviewed journals also proved to be difficult.Ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā My main issue in writing this paper and any paper for that matter is that it takes me a painstakingly long time to formulate what I want to say. Sometimes it will take me 15 to 20 minutes to write one sentence. There are times though where I can get into a flow and write continuously. I found that developing the paper became easier once I wrote what I believed to be necessary first. Then I was able to find sources to support my claims. Gathering that support can be a little tricky though as you need quality sources. When it came to data, I found I used Pew Research a lot. Iām not sure if I used it too much or should have pulled from other data sources as well.Ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā An unfortunate byproduct of writing this paper is that the more research I did and the more I wrote, the less I believed that we will ever be able to reduce the effect misinformation is having on our society. Iām still very confident that a joint effort between the government, Big Tech and the education system is the only way weāll get a handle on it. Only time will tell.
