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Determining And Evaluating Context

1.  Explanation that can be Used in All Classrooms

In Unit 1, we discussed how to evaluate viewpoints by looking at the expertise of the author, how representative their opinion is and analyzing the bias of the source. You can also evaluate an article by determining and evaluating its context. To do so, try the following:

• Look at where it appeared in the newspaper. If something is at the top of the front page versus buried further in the paper, this provides a clue as to the bias/outlook of the news outlet toward that story. This translates to online news outlets as well. Is it on the homepage or deeper in the site? If it is on the homepage, is it up near the top or down near the bottom?
• Look at how a story is covered across news sources. Find a story in one paper and see how it is covered in other papers on the same day.
• Look deeply into a specific news source to determine its bias. Even if a source doesn't overtly have a bias (for example, it isn't representing itself as a liberal or conservative source), you can still determine a lot about its ideology by examining the demographics of its readership.
• Find out more about the context of a web site by seeing who links to it and who has commented on it.

2.  Next Steps - No Technology in the Classroom

Ask your students to evaluate the context of an article/source they identified. Give them the Determining and Evaluating Context Guide and ask them to use the most appropriate method for their source. They can either discuss it in class, or turn in the Determining and Evaluating Context Worksheet.

3.  Next Steps - Instructor Station Only

Choose a source and have the class determine the context of the source using some or all of the tools described in the Determining and Evaluating Context of the Resources/Databases section of the wiki. You can demo any/all of these tools and lead a discussion of the source you are evaluating as a class while doing so. Ask your students to tell you how the context of the source impacted their evaluation of that source.

4.  Next Steps - Hands-on/Networked Classroom

Demo some or all of the tools described in the Determining and Evaluating Context of the Resources/Databases section of the wiki. You can also lead a discussion of a specific source in conjunction with the demo to show how you can use context to evaluate a source. Then ask your students to do the same thing for a source they identified for their own papers. You can use the Determining and Evaluating Context Worksheet in conjunction with this exercise.

5.  Suggested Resources/Databases

See the Determining and Evaluating Context section