Fister’s the devil in the details: Media representation of ritual abuse and evaluation of sources makes a good point about the reliability of sources of information in the media. She gives examples of how books, newspapers and other media usually don’t have reliable information. Popular culture reference a lot of unreliable sources. Fister suggests that many people who never research their sources to back up a claim. According to Fister, reliable sources are very difficult to find but FBI, students and other professional need to their research.
Grimmelmann’s the Google Dilemma also makes reference to the fact the Google is not a reliable source of information. Google creates a ranking system which can make or break some business. People can also create links to change search engines rankings. If a government doesn’t like something written they can change it.
I feel after these two readings one must do extensive research on what information is gathered on a specific topic. I feel like I need to do a lot of research before using information for a paper or a book. I feel that using tools such as the search engines needs to be done with caution. I also feel people don’t look extensively to where they are getting there information from.
You do have a point there i could understand what you are saying. Most search engines would pop up wikipedia on their first page but that does not mean that its reliable. In fact for a research paper its much more tougher to find good sources due to the fact that search engine’s ranking system is only by how much traffic it has.I to would be cautious on information for my research paper because if i take it too lightly the information i may be using could be bad.