It is very common for us students to write essays in almost every class. In most cases, these essays require evidence to support our arguments or our analysis. However, when we look for sources to support our evidence, we must be careful what sources we use. Today, we can find all sorts of sources available to help us look for information. We have Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other types of media that give us information about almost any topic we are doing research on. However, not all these sources are considered credible. For a source to be credible, it is up to date, it’s not biased, and the author is known. Wikipedia for example is not a credible source to consider when looking for textual support. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit their page, for this reason teachers and professors tell their students to stay away from Wikipedia. Social media shouldn’t be your go to when writing a research paper because social media is a place where people are biased. Social media allows us to post our thoughts and opinions without the need of facts. Anyone can make a statement about a topic without having a degree or having any knowledge about the information. For example, many of us have talked about or probably have read about the virus that has been spreading around. If you think about it, many of the people that have talked about this virus are not scientist or doctors. They are all making assumptions about what caused it and why people have died from it. Have you ever thought about whether those people are credible? Google on the other hand is full of sources that are and are not credible because we can find anything on this web engine. For this exact reason, high school English teachers have told us to look for sources on “Google Scholar”, articles that have been published by “.org”, “.edu”, and “.gov”. These are great sources to stick to because all the articles are written by people that are experts in the topic they are writing about. They also provide facts to support what they are writing about, and they also include other credible sources in their articles.
Carla's Perspective 
I agree that there are many sources available for students to use in their research but not every source is reliable. I agree that it is important to check if the source is reliable or not first. And if it is reliable, it makes the job easier to pull information from that source. I agree that social media is not the best source to use for doing research because there are many people who can be biased, but depending on the topic of the research than it could be reliable. I agree with the current problem with the virus many people keep assuming what is going to happen if it is going to spread more or eventually die down. People have many opinions about any topic so sometimes they aren’t too reliable.
-Viviana Barajas
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I liked that you individually went through specific social media platforms and explained why each one was a credible source, you did not just talk about social media as a whole. I agree a lot about the statement that you made about how most people who post information on social media aren’t 100% knowledgeable about those topics because they are not doctors or scientists and could be spreading misinformation. The platform that I am constantly seeing news and information is twitter. I am always seeing people post about politics, news and other social problems but I will hear about 20 different arguments or stories on the subject. That is when I learned to not believe everything i saw. I completely agree with your whole blog!
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Carla,
Each week, I’ll comment on four or five posts, so everyone hears from me twice over the course of the semester. It sounds like you have been trained pretty well, not only in where to look for sources that are reliable and credible but also how to evaluate some of these things on your own. A lot of students get all the way through high school without much knowledge about or experience with research and writing research papers, and so much of this is required in college, it can leave these students at a disadvantage. Thanks for a great post this week!
Rachel G.
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