Transcript Online Journalism - Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU

JOUR 384 Online Journalism
Lesson 2: Internet Research
Metin Ersoy
FCMS
Internet Research
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There are two main tasks for the journalist –
the gathering (toplama) of the news materials
and their dissemination (yayma).
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Online can have a striking impact on this
work, helping you trace information, come up
with story ideas and find sources, contacts
and potential interviewees.
Internet Research
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Four Elements of ‘gathering in’
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Finding information
Finding people
Checking information
Analaysing information
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Four Elements of ‘gathering in’
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Finding information: A broad heading, which could
include documents, data, photographs, audio,
video, etc.
Finding people: Not just named individuals, but
also tapping into debate, current thinking, trends
and fashions.
Checking information: Using online reference
resources.
Analysing information: In particular data.
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Finding information – the World Wide Web
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You need information at every stage of the news
identification and collection process. Not just
specific information to develop your story, but
contextual stuff that will bolster (destekleyici) your
knowledge of underpinning structures and current
affairs.
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Finding information – the World Wide Web
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Much of the information available online is posted on the
World Wide Web. Recent studies put the number of
documents on the Web at over one billion, and this is
estimated to grow to over 13 billion pages by 2004.
This is where the trouble starts. The Web is not like a
library and it does not have a single comprehensive
catalogue or an ordered system of storage.
At an early stage, learn to think as clearly as possible
about what you are looking for before you go online.
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All sites have an address, which is known as
the uniform resource locator (URL). Every
page on every site will have its own
distinctive address with the site URL as its
root.
So that URL for the Kibris Newspaper site is
kibrisgazetesi.com
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Domains that denote the purpose of the
organization include:
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.com, which is commercial;
.edu, which is education;
.gov, which is government;
.int, which is international organizations;
.net, which is networks; and
.org, which is non-commercial organizations.
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The geographical codes are often more clear cut, for example .tr is
Turkey and .cy is Cyprus.
However, some would be more difficult to guess. Neither Portugal
(.pt) or Poland (.pl) have the code .po.
As can be seen from the list above, some domains combine the two.
The Eastern Mediterranean University is a University in the North
Cyprus. Its URL is emu.edu.tr. If we break that down we can see the
following:
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emu. (Eastern Mediterranean University);
edu. (Education domain); and
tr. (Turkey domain)
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How to look further
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To discover the true value of the web as a
resource, you will have to search it. Before you do
this, you must ask yourself two important ‘bottomup’ questions.
What type of information am I looking for?
Deconstruct the potential story and look at its
component parts. What sort of information,
opinion and data will help to develop the story or
help to brief you?
Internet Research
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How to look further
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Where am I likely to find it? Can the web sites you
already know and trust give you the information
you need? If they cannot, you should consider
which search tool will the most appropriate and
efficient.
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Search tools
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Search engines, are one way of searching the
Web, but they are not the only search tool. There
are others that can be more effective depending
on what you need.
Search engines are hugely powerful pieces of
software that search for web content.
Some examples of search engines are:
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AltaVista – www.altavista.com
Google – www.google.com
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Each engine provides a box to type in the
`keywords` of the material you are looking for.
Your choice of these keywords plays a large part
in the success of your search.
Normally, the engine will scan web pages
looking for meta data that matches your
keywords.
Meta data is part of the HTML code for each
web page, inserted by the page’s author but
hidden from view unless you look for it.
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Search engines also have different methods
of searching.
However, considering that the Web currently
has an estimated billion pages, no search
engine will look everywhere on the Web.
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Google is one of the best search engines. Note the simplicity of the
initial interface, inviting you to try the search function.
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Meta search engines
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It is a search engine that harnesses the power
other search engines. It searches the other search
engines, rather than building its own database.
As an example for meta-search engine is:
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Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)
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Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)
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Subject directories
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Some people might name their favorite search
engine as Yahoo!, but Yahoo! is a subject
directory not a search engine.
Yahoo! as a subject directory, has been compiled
by human beings. This means you can browse
through a database of handpicked sites organized
under subject headings.
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Subject guides
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They are usually web sites run by individual
experts in their fields.
They focus on a single subject and contain many
links to other relevant sites and some useful
additional information, comment and evaluation
bye the site provides.
Example of subject guides web site;
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Virtual Library (www.vlib.org)
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Virtual Library (www.vlib.org)
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Simple arithmetic
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AND (same as +)
NOT (same as -)
OR
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Simple guiding principles for searching online
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Is it general search or a specific query (sorguya
çekmek)?
Any online search you conduct is not a ‘stand alone’.
You still nee the underpinning your knowledge of
current affairs, political structure, etc.
Be patient.
Most importantly, remember that seeing is not
believing. Just because it’s on a screen, it does not
mean that it’s true.
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Simple tips for faster searching
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If you know the name of the organization, it can
save a lot of time.
When looking through a long document retrieved
by a search tool, press Control and F on your
keyboard.
Know when to stop looking.
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