Navigating the Internet

Chris Kyauk, Masters Student in Library and Information ScienceSan Jose State

DETERMINING AUTHOR BIAS ONLINE

WHAT IS THE INTERNET TO YOU?

By flickr user violinha via Flickr CC license

“librarians used only one source to answer a question 75% of the time and used fewer than four sources 95.8% of the time. While this may indicate the lack of complexity in the questions, it may also reflect the power of the online sources to answer questions quickly and efficiently.” – Reference Transactions Analysis

WHY CARE?

In Vernor Vinge’s science fiction novel, A Fire Upon

the Deep, the internet is called “The Web of A Thousand Lies” because every one truth is immediately buried under a thousand lies.

THE INTERNET

IN MODERN DAY FRANCE…

By Flickr User – eko – via CC license

Although hyperbole, that image has some truth. It is not Google that is the liar, but the sites on Google that can lie. It is impossible to be absolutely sure about the veracity of any information- but there are ways to see if some pre-existing bias exists.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE?

Authority How to detect authorship in

Websites Wikipedia Articles

In past lessons, we had covered:Currency

Or “is the web page up to date?”Accuracy

Or “is the website accurate?”

TODAY’S LESSON

By 姒儿喵喵 via Flickr CC license

THE TRI-FORCE

Authority

Currency

Accuracy

THE AUTHORITY TRIFORCE

Websites

Wikipedia

Authority

Articles

THE AUTHORITY TRIFORCE

Websites

Authority

As you may know, websites have several suffixes (or domain names) that can hint at their purpose- .com for companies .org for organizations .net for internet administrative websites (although it has

become more of a catch-all today) .edu for educational websites .gov for governmental websites

WEBSITES OVERVIEW

The White House Try out these suffixes for The White House www.whitehouse.gov www.whitehouse.com

Several years ago, this link lead to an adult website; this is no longer the case.

www.whitehouse.org www.whitehouse.net

Please give me a smiley face when you’ve finished checking each of these websites out.

PARTICIPATION EXAMPLE

WWW.WHITEHOUSE.ORG

Every website has to be registered. Website registration ensures that you get to Google when you type in Google.com, and not Yahoo.com.

Real world analogy: when you ask for a Big Mac at the McDonalds drive-thru, you don’t get a McSkillet (hopefully). The person serving you knows what to get you something that looks like a Big Mac from the kitchen.

DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS

APPLICATION SHARING

Go to:

www.domaintools.com

Under Whois Lookup,Search for www.whitehouse.org

WHAT DO WE GET?

I’ll give you two minutes to look up a website on a controversial topic, and try to see if the author of the website is not who they seem to be. Feel free to share if you find something surprising! Raise your hand or type your answer or question in the chat box.

EXPLORATION TIME

Websites may have an author that is not who they may seem to be. You can identify authors via domain registry lookups, but

even though the information listed has to be valid, it can be through a “shell” or a front organization.

Nor are all respected resources always trustable. Sometimes they may be maliciously hijacked. Such as Comcast.net, when it was hacked & redirected to

another site. Thankfully, major websites are very rarely hijacked-

otherwise you would not know who is telling the truth!

MINI-RECAP

THE AUTHORITY TRIFORCE

Wikipedia

Authority

WIKIPEDIA AUTHORSHIP

WIKIPEDIA BIAS

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=7321742

How do we know if this was a malicious edit?

The number there is a link to the “author” of the article. It is called an “IP address” – the equivalent of a mailing address on the internet.

INTERNET SLEUTHING

We put the “address,” 205.227.165.244 into an Internet Number Registry. Go to: http://whois.arin.net/ui/ This Registry is the equivalent of the Yellow Pages on the

Internet.

And the IP leads us to…

However, none of this is conclusive evidence. Someone could have “spoofed” or faked the address to try to frame the Church of Scientology.

THE END OF THE CHASE?

The Church of Scientology is not the only group to have edited themselves on Wikipedia. Wired Magazine compiled a large database of suspicious IP links making article edits at:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/08/vote-on-the-top/

Although this happened three years ago, I doubt that such edits no longer occur.

SCIENTOLOGY ALONE?

All this does not mean that Wikipedia should not be wholly ignored. It is a great starting place, but it is not a source.

MINI-RECAP

THE AUTHORITY TRIFORCE

Authority

Articles

Even peer-reviewed articles are not immune to bias.

Sample Issue:Atrazine is one of the top weed-killing herbicides,

produced by Syngenta, used in the United States today. There are claims that it is responsible for frog hermaphroditism.

One article claims to have debunked such claims, as listed on Syngenta’s website.

ARTICLE AUTHORSHIP

Does Atrazine Influence Larval Development and Sexual Differentiation in Xenopus laevis?

By Werner Kloas, I lka Lutz, Timothy Springer, Henry Krueger, Jeff Wolf, Larry

Holden and Alan Hosmer

Yet a quick look at the biographies of the authors reveals that Hosmer is an employee of Syngenta, and the study was funded by Syngenta.

DEBUNKED?

Look for peer-reviewed articles, and try to find who funded them and their authors. This is the best way of determining if any bias exists.

MINI-RECAP

RECAP

Authority

Currency

Accuracy

WITHIN THE AUTHORITY TRIFORCE

Websites

Wikipedia

Authority

Articles

Authority is important Use only sources that you can trace to a well known entity

Through Domain Registry lookup or IP lookups, Be careful!

Cross check every source. Take nothing for granted. Tools to know what Websites to trust:

Web of Trust, a Firefox add-on.

Homework: Look up a Wikipedia article. Pick an IP address at random and

identify where it came from. Look up a website on a controversial topic. Look up its domain

registry and see if the author listed on the website matches the registry.

AUTHORITY

Questions?

Contact me at: chriskyauk@gmail.com

THANK YOU!