2 Finding Sources

When you are engaging in any kind of citizenship behavior, and with the media, you can and should form an opinion about it. Part of being a citizen is forming an opinion about how you want to vote, where you want to volunteer, etc… But you should also back your opinion up with some kind of information, evidence, or examples because it can be problematic when people just share their opinion without having any sources to support their opinion. Because people tend to react, think, or make decisions based on their emotions, instead of their thoughts, that takes them down a not a very productive path when it comes to citizenship.

That evidence can come from two main types of sources.

The first one is scholarly, which would generally be peer reviewed research. Peer reviewed research means that a researcher conducted an experiment using a scientific method and wrote up the results. However, they don’t just get it published; they have to submit it to a review before it can be printed. Other people who are also experts in that field will read the paper and critique it. This is why in the really good journals, they rejected 80 to 90% of the papers that are sent to them. For the papers that are accepted, they usually have to go through some kind of revisions. Some things to look for in peer review include: Do your data support your claims? Did you use the right kind of statistics? Did you include enough background information to justify your hypotheses? Is your topic even interesting? Or relevant? The downside of that is that it means a lot of the information can be a bit outdated because it can take years for a paper to get published. The good thing is that means that peer reviewed information is by far the most reliable; it’s really been through the gauntlet. So you can trust  that the information is the best information that you can get. It doesn’t mean that sometimes a bad article might not slip through; they do. Sometimes you have people who outright falsify their results. It doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, they will be caught because  peer review makes science self correcting with repetition studies. So when you use peer-reviewed citations, it can be a good thing to have more than one. But, as mentioned, stories about research with fake data that you might hear about in the news, in reality are extremely rare. Thus, peer reviewed articles are really the gold standard for sources to support your statements if they apply. However, these are generally used for factual information, not often new, current events. For those, you’re going to want to look to more popular sources.

Popular sources include newspapers, documentaries, television shows, etc… They’re not academic, but they’re current, and in the real world, sometimes you don’t have a choice but to use a popular source because there is no peer reviewed articles about what happened in the country this morning. Rather, you can look to journalism to tell you about today’s news. The tricky thing with popular sources is that you have to vet them. Try to find newspapers that have a really good reputation or newspapers that have policies in which they correct mistakes if they make them.

Anatomy of a peer reviewed article

Few people have spent a lot of time reading peer reviewed research. So, it can seem intimidating when you first start. However, if we break it up, you’ll see it’s not that bad. The abstract tells you the main points of the paper, which is an excellent place to start. A lot of students will just read the abstract and stop there, but I highly discourage you from doing that because there’s a lot of good information that you’re going to miss. Also, you might misinterpret the result if you just read the abstract.

After the abstract, papers generally start with a bit of an introduction to the whole paper. This often includes what you’re studying and why you’re studying it. For example, what kind of knowledge already exists about this topic and what are you adding to the world around you by doing this? This literature review is an excellent way to learn about what we already know and what we stand to gain from further research.

Then there will be a section on the methods that were used to conduct the reseach and a section on the results of the research. During the peer-review process, these sections are scrutinized heavily to ensure that the research methods are sound and that the data support any claims that are made. The results section can contain a lot of math, but don’t be intimidated by this. They will summarize the findings in the next section as well.

The final section generally summarizes the findings of the study and explains how those results fit in with previously known information. The authors may also suggest further avenues of research that can help us continue to learn more about the topic. I recommend reading this dicussion section very carefully since it provides good context for what was found and how that relates to information that had already been discovered.

Evaluating sources

Ideally, when people read the news, they will evalute each individual news article they’ve read to evaluate the quality of the piece. However, this is often not realistic given the time that would take. Rather, it can be helpful to evaluate an individual sources as opposed to an individual article. There are some clues you can use to evalute newspapers to see if they are generally reliable and have the public’s best interest in mind.

For example, the Columbus Dispatch has updated their coverage guidelines to keep the public informed about local crime while also considering empathy and fairness (Miller, 2021). The main issue they are addressing is that it is important to keep the public informed about crime, but when newspapers report a lot about crime (without balancing with other news), it can give a false impression of how much crime is taking place. By updating their policies to and making plans to evaluate those new guidelines in the future, they are intentionally working toward being representative of the entire community while keeping the public informed. When newspapers are transparent in their efforts to provide this kind of balance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are always achieving this balance. But, it does provide some evidence that this newspaper may be a better quality one than those who do not have such systems in palce.

Another way you can evaluate the quality of a news source (in addition to examining their guidelines, such as the Columbus Dispatch example above) is to look at their coverage of specific topics and see if it lines up with scientific information and the goals of media for citizenship behaviors. Fox News is an example of a media outlet that has not been as transparent or accurate in their reporting. We can examine their coverage of issues like climate change (Feldman, et al., 2012) and see that they are more dismissive of facts, include more commentary from non-degree holding doubters, and have a stronger negative correlation with understanding scientific facts than other outlets. In addition to climate change, information about correlations between Fox News and racial bias (Awasthi, 2020; Zuniga et al., 2012) show a disturbing correlation between viewership and negative perceptions of others. We can also examine legal arguments an outlet makes, such as Fox News settling a lawsuit about disinformation the network spread about a Democratic National Committee staff member which not so subtly included a clause that the settlement had to be kept a secret until after the 2020 presidential election (Smith, 2021). In fact, part of the reason why conservatives tend to have a harder time distinguishing fact from falsehoods is that disinformation more often reflects conservative positions (Garrett & Bond, 2021).

While the Dispatch and Fox News serve as examples for ways you can evaluate a media source, there are many other factors you can examine. For example, does the news source have an official policy for correcting misinformation? Do they allow their writers to view the popularity of their articles online? How is the news source funded? What is the average educational background of their employees?

While it can be time consuming to explore all of these factors, the benefit of doing so is that you can use that information to make an informed decision about what news sources you would like to invest your time (and possible money) into.

References

Awasthi, P. (2020 October 21). Viewers of Covid-19 news on Fox TV more likely to be biased against Asians. BusinessLine.

Garrett, R. K., & Bond, R. M. (2021). Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions. Science Advances, 7.

Miller, A. (July 2021). From the editor: Guilded by empahty and fireness, Dispatch updates crime coverage guidelines.

Smith, B. (January 2021). Fox settled a lawsuit over its lies. But it insisted on one unusual condition. The New York Times.

Zuniga, H. Correa, T. & Valenzuela, S. (2012). Selective exposure to cable news and immigration in the U.S.: The relationship between Fox news, CNN, and attitudes toward Mexican immigrants. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Meida, 56, 597-615.