Analysis of Web Sources

When looking at any source, particularly Web sources, the key questions to ask yourself are:

1. Who wrote this?

2. Why?

When looking for sources–particularly websites–think about whether or not they are reliable. You want your paper to contain sources written by unbiased and professional experts, not businessmen with commercial interests.

The material in the chart is covered in the text below

Questions you may want to consider when investigating a website include:

Author

  • Who is providing the information?
  • What do you know about him/her and his/her credentials?
  • Is he/she an expert?
  • Can you find out more and contact him/her?
  • Search for author or publisher in search engine. Has the author written several publications on the topic?
  • Does the author support the information with works cited or links to other sources?

Publisher

  • Is there a sponsor or affiliation?
  • Who is linking to the page?
  • Do they take responsibility for the content?

Bias

  • Does the organization or author indicate there will be bias?
  • Is the purpose of the website to inform or to spread an agenda?
  • Is there an “About” link?
  • Is the site personal, commercial, governmental, organizational, or educational? (.com, .gov, .org, .edu)
  • Are there ads? Are they trying to make money?
  • Why did they write the article?
  • Is the site a content farm? (A content farm is a site whose content has been generated by teams of low-paid freelancers who write large amounts of text to raise the site’s search engine rankings.)

Citations

  • Copy and paste a sentence into Google to see if the text can be found elsewhere.
  • Are there links to related sites? Are they organized?
  • Are citations or a bibliography provided?

Currency

  • When was the source last updated?
  • Does the source even have a date?

Design

  • Is the source professional?
  • Does it seem like current design?
  • Is the website user-friendly?
  • What kinds of images are used?
  • Is the navigation menu well-labeled?
  • Are there spelling or grammar errors?
  • Do the pages appear uncluttered?
  • Are there ads or pop-ups on the page?
  • Are links working?

Reproduced

  • Was it reproduced? If so, from where? Type a sentence in Google to verify.
  • If it was reproduced, was it done so with permission? Is copyright/disclaimer included?

Bias in the Media

Keep in mind that everything is written from a particular social, cultural, and political perspective. Realize that some publications tend to be ‘slanted’ towards a certain viewpoint. For example, the CATO Institute is known for being libertarian, while The Nation is known to lean left, politically. Keep these slants in mind when you are researching.

Here are two charts that show the leanings of various major media outlets. As you will note, the charts are not in total agreement, but they do seem to concur about the political leanings of the most partisan media websites and publications. Informed readers and writers will know the political leanings of a particular newspaper, tv station, or magazine. Some sources are so partisan that they are not useful for academic papers. When in doubt, check with your instructor.

Chart 1: Note the comments about whether the source contains reputable information. A link to the most recent version of the chart is here: Static Media Bias Chart

Chart showing political leanings of media sites. Liberal Conspiracy Theories: Natural News. Addicting Info. Hyper-Partisan Liberal: MSNBC Huff Post and The Nation. Show Liberal but reputable: Slate, Vox, the Atlantic, the Guardian. Mainstream: NPR, BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, AP. Reuters, NBC, ABC, CBS Conservative but reputable: The Hill, The Economist. Hyper Partisan, Fox News, The National Review. Conservative Conspiracy Theories, The Daily Caller, Info Wars, The Blaze, Red State

Chart 2: This chart makes distinctions between newspaper editorials and newspaper reporting. Often, a newspaper’s editorials/opinion pieces will be much more slanted than their straight news reporting. To find the recent version of this chart, go to: AllSides Media Bias Chart

All sides media chart. Sources on Political Left: CNN Opinion, Alternet, Buzz Feed, Daily Beast, Democracy Now, HuffPost, Mother Jones, MSNBC, Newsweek The New Yorker, The New York Times Opinion, the Nation, Slate, Vox; Sources that Lean Left: ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, the Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, The NY Times, Politico, Yahoo News, The Washington Post Center Leaning: AP, Axios, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR News, Reuters, Real Clear Politics, The Hill, The Wall Street Journal Right Leaning: The American Conservative, Fox News, NY Post, The Wall STreet Journal Opinion, The Washington TImes Right: The American Spectator, The Blaze, The Daily Mail, The Daily Wire, Fox News Opinion, The National Review, Newsmax
From Introduction to College Composition, Lumen, https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Composition/Book%3A_Introduction_to_College_Composition_(Lumen)/03%3A_Research/17%3A_Source_Analysis/17.4%3A_Evaluating_Websites