JOUR 384 Online Journalism

Lesson 2: Internet Research

Metin Ersoy

FCMS

Internet Research

There are two main tasks for the journalist – the gathering (toplama) of the news materials and their dissemination (yayma).

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.

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Four Elements of ‘gathering in’

Finding information Finding people Checking information Analaysing information

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Four Elements of ‘gathering in’ 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 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 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: .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: emu. (Eastern Mediterranean University); edu. (Education domain); and tr. (Turkey domain)

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How to look further 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 ‘bottom-up’ 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?

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How to look further 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 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: 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 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: Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)

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Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)

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Subject directories 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 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; Virtual Library (www.vlib.org)

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Virtual Library (www.vlib.org)

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Simple arithmetic AND (same as +) NOT (same as -) OR

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Simple guiding principles for searching online1. Is it general search or a specific query (sorguya

çekmek)?

2. Any online search you conduct is not a ‘stand alone’. You still nee the underpinning your knowledge of current affairs, political structure, etc.

3. Be patient.

4. 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 searching1. If you know the name of the organization, it can

save a lot of time.

2. When looking through a long document retrieved by a search tool, press Control and F on your keyboard.

3. Know when to stop looking.

4. pdf

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