INTL 471 Understanding the International Experience: Assessing Web Resources

The internet can be an excellent resource for finding information, but care must be taken when determining which sources to trust. Anyone can register a .org or .com domain, and private institutions with a cultural, religious, political, or social bias can register their websites as .edu.   As with all sources, consider the following questions when deciding whether or not to use a web resource:

-Who wrote the page?
-Why did they create the page?
-Where did they get their information?
-Is it clear who created the page?

Often, official-looking pages can be biased sources. As an example, consider the "Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University."

It suggests a university affiliation, and has a .org URL.   If you go to the "About Us" page, however, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you can see their Board of Directors:

The Institute's affliction with Koch Industries, which is not referenced elsewhere on the website, has a significant influence on the content and information.  Further digging reveals that the Institute rents space on George Mason campus, and is not a department of the university. It is literally "at" the university, but not a part of it.

Consider who created the website - and why - when deciding whether to use it as a source.   Similarly, when using Wikipedia, remember that anyone can edit entries.