# Web Search and Evaluation

To see which sites contained the phrase, Northeastern University, I used Google's advanced search to find website by typing in "Northeastern University" under "this exact word or phrase." From this, I was able to get 23.6 million results.

To see which sites contained web pages about skate fish without the mention of ice rink, I typed skate fish in "this exact word or phrase," then typed "ice rink" under "none of these words."

To find webpages about the Northeastern Huskies from 2001 to 2002, I would type "Northeastern Huskies" under "all these words," then enter the time frame 2001-2002.

Using the above criteria, the following was the top image:

The webpage of questionable credibility that I chose was [*The Onion*](https://www.theonion.com/). Even though, at first sight, the website seems similar to other mainstream media sites, The Onion fits the criteria outlined by both [*Valenza*](https://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/11/26/truth-truthiness-triangulation-and-the-librarian-way-a-news-literacy-toolkit-for-a-post-truth-world/) and [*Berkeley Library*](https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-resources).

An article from the Onion was observed to see the "about me" section to check the author's credentials, but the article does not have the author's name anywhere within the post.

# Reading Response

The article also has extreme claims to "fix" the constant flooding sometime in the next few months, which is clearly unrealistic. The articles within the Onion are problematic to media in the internet because although many may know and laugh at the satire expressed, the Onion has the appearance and undertone of what looks like a legitimate news source. The reader may treat this as satire if they have background on the nature of the news source, but for those without any knowledge of the Onion, this article could easily have been delivered as fact. Additionally, Valenza's notion that news sources, even credible sources, have "varying degrees of truth" to the content is also applied within this article. The article could have been written to criticize the ability of Todd Sloboda in controlling flooding within neighborhoods, but this article appears as if one person will "fix" flooding. Using Valenza's idea of "Triangulate", the information on the article could not be verified by any other source.

This article, along with the source, also fails to satisfy the criteria from the Berkeley Library. There is no information on the author or any credibility for the Onion as a whole from searching the website. The claims made in the article do not have any citations or any other resource that would support the claims. Most importantly, the article lacks an overall purpose. While it can be argued that the purpose is to inform, the author does not provide any background on the topic for the reader to gain a full insight to the story they are reading. I see this to be problematic if applied with political topics because many authors seek attention for their article rather than objectivity. The unsuspecting public, attracted by extreme statements and short explanations, will most likely treat articles of similar nature as truth.

1. The claims match the Wikipedia verifibility in a sense that they provide citations and resources to support their claim. The reader is able to click through the links for more information on the topic. However, the biggest problem with Wikipedia's policy is that the source that is used to support claims are directly from Wikipedia as well. While the source of the information is "verified," the verification is done by Wikipedia, or itself, which is also able to be edited by the public. While I was able find out what the [World Wide Web Consortium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium) was, this was also from Wikipedia. I also was not able to verify your affiliation with the World Wide Web Consortium from the link alone.

1. I had the same issue with verifying the Best Selling Book because while the citation for the book gave a lot of information on the book, it give little background on how it was best selling.

The only change I would suggest for the Wikipedia page is to have more background behind statements so that the reader has more information. This is because the Wikipedia page expects the reader to click on the link given in order to find information about the topic. However, not only are people unlikely to click on this link, but also they will not get credible information as much of the information in the following Wikipedia page does not address the statements made.

The original Wikipedia page was created in 2011.