When researching this topic, I wanted to explore many different databases and websites in order to draw my ultimate conclusions of information from all of the sources. My first step started with my investigation of finding a Tier 1 and Tier 2 source. I used the academic search website “JSTOR” which is a digital library of many different books, articles, peer reviewed journals, and other primary sources. I know this is reliable because Westminster students use this from the library when participating in research projects. My Tier 1 and 2 sources consisted of academic journal articles that I used throughout my post. After establishing these sources, I looked for reliable sources that are known to have accurate information. I looked on the New York Times website for an article about my topic. I know that the New York Times is a reliable source to gather information from because of their known credibility with authors that provide accurate information that is checked. I clicked on the author’s name of the article (Anna Betts), and saw that she provided details on her experience in journalism including that she has written for other newspapers such as the Washington Post and the Verge and also describes her credibility in Journalism. When checking media sources, it is important to check the author and see if they are credible, which is what I did. On another source (ACLED), I also saw the information of the two authors that wrote the article on the bottom of the source, which tells me they are credible. Another source I used was from the website politico, and it was written by Catherine Kim who is an assistant editor at Politico. The article showed examples from many different students that have spoken about their experiences with the current event I researched, proving that they are giving accurate first hand account information. Politico also falls relatively in the middle of the media bias chart, which tells me that they are not leaning towards a left or right side. Two other sources I used were from PBS, which is also a well known credible source. PBS also falls in the middle of the media bias chart. It is extremely important to take into account that when researching a specific topic, especially the one that I researched (College protests regarding the Israel-Hamas war), social media can give inaccurate information. TikTok provides news stories that people get their news from, but I avoided learning information from TikTok because I have learned that it can give false information and extremely biased opinions. When researching, I only used sources that fell in the middle of the media bias chart and were known to be credible.
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