How to Become a

CSI

Confident, Savvy,

Internet-user

Most of the information in this presentation is from Alan November’s presentation “Teaching Zack to Think” and his website www.anovember.com

The Case

• Fourteen-year old Zack is working on a paper about the Holocaust. He finds the following site, marked Exhibit A.

Exhibit A

The Crime

• According to Professor Butz:– “I see three principal reasons for the

widespread but erroneous belief in the legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II…”

• Zack has become the victim of bad information on the Internet.

Causes

• Common causes of misinformation on the Internet include:

• Biased information

• Date changes (out of date information)

• Including content from other sites out of context.

• Pranks and hoaxes

The Prevention• Good investigation can uncover a great

deal of information about the authenticity and legitimacy of a web site.

• To quote from educational leader Alan November:

“As much time as we spend teaching kids how to find things on the Net, we need to expend 10 times more effort teaching them how to interpret what they’ve found.”

The Methods

• The various techniques we will discuss are placed into three categories of information– Author– Purpose– Meta-Web Information

Author

• The first thing you can look at to learn about the author of a site is the web address, or URL. The address to Professor Butz’s site is:http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html

– At first glance, this address seems quite legitimate – nwu.edu stands for Northwestern University, where Arthur Butz is a faculty member.

Author

– But take a deeper look. Notice that there is a tilde (~) following the nwu.edu. This is a dead giveaway for a personal web site. So while it is hosted on NWU’s web server, the information within it is personal and not linked to the university.

Author

– Here are other examples of web addresses to personal web sites. Notice the first one has the word users instead of the tilde.

• http://www.cdsinet.net/users/bartlett

• http://www.iag.net/~k9krazee

– While information on a personal web site is not necessarily inaccurate, the reader must understand that it is not edited or verified by any authority.

Author

• It’s easy to fool people when you sound authoritative, and Arthur Butz is a college professor at Northwestern University. But does that make him a reliable source?– Upon closer examination of his site you

can learn that he’s an Engineering professor, which certainly does not qualify him to speak as an expert on the Holocaust.

Author

• We can learn even more about Arthur Butz by searching for him on the web.

• A search for Arthur Butz returns many web sites that illustrate how others view him, including many hate and anti-hate sites. This helps students put Mr. Butz’s comments into a context, rather than blindly accepting him as an authority.

Author

• What if you can’t tell who the author of a site is?– First – that’s a tip that the site or author

may not be legitimate.– Second – search the URL at Register.com

• For example – the web site www.martinlutherking.org. A search for the owner of the domain reveals that he is affiliated with stormfront.org – a hate site. And this Martin Luther King site is filled with racism and hate.

Purpose

• Web sites usually have one or more of the following purposes: sell services and products; present information; advocate ideas; entertain.

• What is the purpose of Arthur Butz’s site? Is he presenting information or is he advocating an idea? How can you tell the difference?

Purpose

• Let’s look at the definition of these two words:– Information: Knowledge derived from

study, experience, or instruction; A collection of facts or data.

– Advocacy: The act of pleading or arguing in favor of something, such as a cause, idea, or policy.

Purpose

• Now let’s look at key words and phrases in Professor Butz’s article:– The Holocaust is referred to as a “legend” eight

times.

– The reference that camps “quartered mainly political prisoners, ordinary criminals, homosexuals, conscientous objectors, and Jews conscripted for labor” makes it sound as though what happened in the camps happened to unimportant people.

Purpose

– To say the holocaust happened represents “incomprehensible blindness on the part of scholars”. He is apparently the only scholar able to see the truth.

– “It is easy to show that the…legend merits skepticism.”

– “If you add all this up you have the strange claim…”

– “I am arguing…”

– “ Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical” You DO want to be thoughtful, don’t you?

Purpose

• And so, on close inspection, we can see that what he is providing is not information, but a point of view he believes. And to not believe this point of view means that you are an incomprehensibly blind scholar or you are not a thoughtful person.

• But would our students be able to examine his words so closely? They need to.

Meta-Web Information

• Meta-web information is about looking at how other web sites view the site you are investigating.

• Let’s see how other web sites view Mr. Butz’s information.

• First – who is linking to Mr. Butz’s page? – Using Altavista, type the following in the

search bar.• link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz

Meta-Web – You will find sites such as:

• www.aryan-nations.org/main-links2.htm (a hate site)

• www.stop-the-hate.org/neo-nazi.html (an anti-hate site)

To quote Alan November:“Basically, the sites fall into two categories:

hate monitors and hate mongers. Among hate monitors, Butz is a shining example of a Holocaust denier. Among hate mongers, Butz

is a shining example.”

Meta-Web Information

• You can refine your link search even more and look at just K12 educational sites that link to Mr. Butz.

link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz +host:k12

(there is a space between the original URL and the +host:k12)

• You can try this with +host:gov +host:org and other domain indicators.

Web Verification

• Many sites, as well as emails, are hoaxes and urban legends.

• http://urbanlegends.about.com is a great source for verifying information about hoaxes and misinformation.(Example: The Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe email hoax)

Verdict

• So the verdict is in: The Internet is a fabulous wealth of knowledge – both accurate and erroneous.

• Finding good, reliable information is the job of a CSI – Confident, Savvy, Internet-user!

Assignment

• In the computer lab you will complete the CSI sheet for the following website.

• You will use the methods discussed in the PPT, use your notes to refresh your memory or log on to our Wikispace to get the PPT we just did.

• http://mssarajspencer.wikispaces.com/

Determining Author

• Let’s see what we can learn about the author of this site, using your CSI Investigation sheet.

http://www.smokingaloud.com/index.html

Determining Purpose

• What is the purpose of the site on smoking? Use your CSI Investigation sheet to determine the purpose.

http://www.smokingaloud.com/index.html

Determining Meta-Web Information

• What can you learn about the smoking web site through Meta-Web searches? Use your CSI Investigation sheet.

http://www.smokingaloud.com/index.html