Social Networking Project - Add just one Annotation to your Bibliography

This week you only need to annotate one of the sources in your bibliography. Your goal is to communicate to the reader how to find the source, the credibility of the source, and what you would plan to use from the source if you were writing a paper to support your thesis. Click here to see how this week's assignment fits into your larger social networking project.

You are doing this to practice reading and summarizing articles, assessing their credibility and type and describing how the information in the article links to your thesis. You are also improving your thesis and bibliography.

STEP 1: Revise your thesis and fix all citations

• Open your Thesis and Bibliography document and revise your thesis based upon comments on your draft thesis.
• Fix any citations that had comments in your draft.
• Make sure your bibliography is alphabetized and has a hanging indent. Use these videos as a guide.
  

STEP 2: Choose one source

• Choose one article from your bibliography.
  

STEP 3: Summary

• Under the citation of the source, write the label "Summary"
• Insert a brief summary of the material covered by the article. Include the main point of the article and a high level view of the topics covered.

STEP 4: Credibility Analysis

Write the label "Credibility"

Write about the credibility of the source, including all the items below:

• Credentials of author or source
  • Qualifications as authority - Find this by researching the author or organization on the internet. Find out who they work for and what their field of study or expertise is. ( Be sure to search using the full name of the author and their affiliation to get the right person.)
  • Quality of other articles published
• Publisher - who is the publisher and also who owns the publisher
• Bias - interest of publisher or author. Mention these signs of bias:
  • Is it in a publication or site meant to sell or convince of a certain viewpoint?
  • Does it use persuasive language?
  • Are both sides of a viewpoint included?
  • Is it missing significant facts or viewpoints from other articles you found.
• Validity of numerical statistics in article
  • Are any numerical facts included?
  • Do numerical facts include a citation of the study they came from so you can verify the facts?
  • Are the statistics based upon a study with a large sample size?
  • Are there conflicting stats on the internet or in other articles? If so, indicate which stats seem to you to be more correct and why.
• Verifiable
  • can you follow the citations?
  • are the sources of the citations biased?
  • Is it peer reviewed, referreed or a legal review? (Find out whether the journal is peer reviewed. Ulrich's Web lists whether a journal is peer reviewed or refereed. Also, some databases have a peer-reviewed filter that can prove the journal is peer reviewed. )
• Category
  • State the type of source: scholarly, popular, trade, government
  • See this description of scholarly vs popular vs trade
• You may find this powerpoint helpful.

• Write the label "What I might use"
• Explain how the source will fit into your essay and how it relates to your thesis. Include facts.

• Mention facts or discussions you would plan to use from the source if you were going to write your paper.
• Describe which section of your paper this source would support or refute.
  • For example: This article provides a counter-argument to facebook being only slightly useful to the Arab Spring.
• This section must relate directly to the thesis. It should not include any information that is not directly related to your thesis.
• You do not need to include in-text citations because the source is clear, but if you copy text use quotes.
  

STEP 6: Submit

• Submit to moodle