USING THE INTERNET AND WEB FOR RESEARCH

Sanjana Hattotuwa Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)

WEB SEARCHING

  The fundamental skill in navigating the web

Search engine of choice

  Google - http://www.google.lk

  Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford. In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.

  Incorporated as Google Inc., on 4 September 1998

  The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol” which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google" was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.”

Deciphering Google

3 simple ways to search

  Use more words  E.g. Sri Lanka journalists vs. journalists

  Use unusual words  Sri Lanka Lasantha Wickremetunga

  Use quotation marks  “Sri Lanka cricket” vs. Sri Lanka Cricket

More advanced searching

Refining a search

  In the old days we used boolean logic AND / OR / NOT

  Now just use + or –   E.g. (1) Sri Lanka (2) Sri Lanka -cricket –sports   Also remember quotation marks “”

Did you mean…

  Sree Lunka   Try putting search query in Microsoft Word, spell

checking it and then copying and pasting it to Google

Keeping pornography at bay

Calculator

  Currency  How do you calculate 1 Swiss Franc to a Sri Lankan

Rupee?

  Metric conversion  How many kilos in a pound?  What is 59 F in Celsius?

NEWS

  The Internet and web have revolutionised the way we access news and information

  Not only do we consume, we can now also report the news (citizens journalism)

Google News

  Google's News is revolutionary in that it is wholly computerised – humans do not make the selections. The links to the news stories on one subject are clustered together, with the total number of stories indicating the scale of worldwide interest.

  Topics are updated every 15 minutes.

  You can customise the news, by arranging Google's subject areas, including sections from their 20+ international editions, in various languages.

  Really advantageous, though, is that you can choose your own subjects: select keywords required in the stories you want and Google will search them out for you on a regular basis.

Google News – over 4,500 news sources

News archives on Google News

Google Newspaper indexing

  Partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let's say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon.

  Not only will you be able to search newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all.

  Pittsburgh Post Gazette - http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=w0sNAAAAIBAJ&dq=pittsburgh&sjid=D20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6256,2864141

Google News alerts through email

RSS

  RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

  An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed”, or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

  They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

My RSS reader

RESOURCES FOR JOURNALISTS

Online resources for journalists

  JournalismNet - http://journalismnet.com/

  CyberJournalist - http://www.cyberjournalist.net/

  Poynter Institute - http://poynter.org/

  Newseum - http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp

  South Asia Journalists Association (SAJA) - http://www.saja.org/

Front pages from Newseum

International Journalist Networks

  International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) - http://www.ifj.org/en

  Reporters Without Borders (RSF) - http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

  International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) - http://www.ifex.org/

REFERENCE TOOLS

  From Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica, the web has more information that can be consumed in a lifetime

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)

  50 million visitors a day   700,000 articles in English

Google Scholar

  Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature.

  From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

  Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

Google Scholar

  http://scholar.google.com

QUOTATIONS

  Gaia Community quotes - http://www.gaia.com/quotes

MACHINE TRANSLATION

  Google Translate - http://translate.google.com/?hl=en

  Yahoo BabelFish - http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

MAPS

  Google Maps and Google Earth have revolutionised the way we access and see geo-spatial information

  Both are free. Google Earth typically requires a powerful PC (graphics intensive) and broadband connectivity.

  New ways to visualise information incl. timelines and historical data

Google Earth (Version 5)

Google Maps

Peacebuilding

Mumbai attacks

Cyclone Nargis

Election violence

BLOGS

  Over 80 million globally   Growing at an incredible pace   In English, Sinhala and Tamil   Anyone can write / anyone can published /

completely free in most cases

What is a blog?

Sri Lankan blogs

  GlobalVoicesOnline - http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/south-asia/

  Groundviews – http://www.groundviews.org

  Kottu – http://www.kottu.org

Technorati - http://technorati.com/

Blogging safely and other issues

  Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents - http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

ONLINE VIDEO

  Vikalpa YouTube video channel - http://www.youtube.com/vikalpasl

  CPA’s Vimeo channel - http://www.vimeo.com/cpa

  Blinkx - http://www.blinkx.com/

  Livestation

IMAGES

  Google Images indexes over 1.3 billion images - http://images.google.lk

  Yahoo indexes over 1.6 billion images - http://images.search.yahoo.com/

  Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/

MEASURING INTEGRITY AND VERACITY

http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/sarah-palin-and-the-veracity-of-information-on-the-web/

How do you measure integrity of a website?   Government information: It may not be correct, but it is official – you can quote a

government source with a clear idea of what you are getting.

  Universities: Academic institutions offer a level of authority – this may vary, but it is something to depend on. Most studies by recognised experts are still reviewed by their peers, so the information is likely to be good quality.

  Special interest groups: Non-governmental organisations and pressure groups may push a particular line, but if they are recognised bodies, you, and your readers, have some idea of what is being provided – it might be Transparency International, the Caracas Chamber of Commerce, or the Red Crescent. Companies and commercial sites could be regarded similarly, though the reliability of the site for an internationally-known brand would be different from an unheard-of dotcom.

  Everything else: Unidentifiable organisations, personal sites, hobbies, obsessions etc. This includes most personal blogs

How do you evaluate a website?   AUTHORITY: Is this a recognised expert? A body with a known reputation?

  AFFILIATION: Who is it connected with? A university? Another reputable body?

  ACCURACY: If you spot mistakes while reading the site, then start worrying.

  APPEARANCE: Is the site carefully put together? A lot of reliable sites are old-fashioned looking, rather than modern or flashy, but a sloppy or amateur-looking production may indicate the site is the work of an individual rather than the large operation it purports to be.

  INTENT: Why does the site exist? Does it do the job it claims to be doing?

  CURRENCY: Is it up-to-date? Look for recent dates, or information you know to be new.

  RECOMMENDATIONS: Is it recommended by other people or organisations, by reliable experts, by people you know? How many links to outside sources / sites does it have?

  DEPTH: Has it done a thorough job in covering a subject or issue?

  COMPREHENSIBILITY: Does the articles / content make sense? Are they inflammatory, partisan? Are there signs of bias?

  CREDIBILITY: Does common sense tell you the information in the site is true?

TRUST ONLINE

NewsTrust - http://newstrust.net

  The NewsTrust.net website features quality news and opinions, which are carefully rated by our members, based on quality, not just popularity.

  NewsTrust reviewers evaluate each story against core principles of journalism, such as fairness, accuracy, context and sourcing -- using our unique review tools.

NewsTrust - http://newstrust.net

Digg - http://digg.com/

  Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg.

  How do we do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images — is submitted by our community (that would be you). Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

Digg - http://digg.com/

NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/

  NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world.

  In twelve short months, the company has become one of the fastest growing news organizations with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries.

  During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic had more reporters in the affected area than most news organizations have on their entire staff.

NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/

Questions?