Reference no: EM133228998

Assignment - Web Source Evaluation Discussion

Do a web search using terms from your research question (Will brick-and-mortar stores go away?)Copy the URLs of a few web pages that contain information on your topic. Then choose one page to focus on for this discussion. Don't worry if you have reservations about the reliability of this source; the point of this activity is primarily to ask questions about sources!

In order to write your Project Introduction, you'll need to develop a general sense -- or "working knowledge" -- of your topic. These days just about everyone accomplishes this with open web searching. Open-web searching will lead you to sources that vary wildly in quality and type. Depending on your topic, much of what you find on the web might be types of sources that pre-date the web, such as newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. You'll also find types of sources that didn't have exact counterparts before the web, such as personal web pages, blogs, and advocacy sites.

In this discussion, we're going to look at the latter type of web sources--sources that force us to wrestle a bit with the complexities of web source evaluation. So, don't use academic-article databases or news sources that are well known and that have been around since before the internet--for example: USA Today, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, Time, etc. (You may not yet be familiar with what is and isn't a major, longstanding news source, but a quick Wikipedia search should help. For example, if you look up The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wikipedia, you'll see that it was founded in 1829.)

Post - Your post should address all four of the following:

1. What is the home page of the main site on which this page appears (provide the URL), and what can you learn about the main site?

2. What are the author's qualifications for writing on this topic? (If no author/s, write "no author listed" and skip to the next question.)

3. Should this source be considered "reliable," "expert," or both? Explain.

4. How this source would be cited in APA. Include a full citation. (Scroll down for web citation examples. If you're an English major, go ahead and use MLA format instead.)