Contextualized Online

Search and Research

EMPOWERMENT TECHNOLOGIES
What search engine sites
you usually access or
use?
Let us Play a Game!
 Search Engine
 A search engine is a software program that helps people find the information
they are looking for online using keywords or phrases.
 Search engines are able to return results quickly—even with millions of
websites online—by scanning the Internet continuously and indexing every
page they find.
 When a user enters a search term, the search engine looks at the website
page titles, contents and keywords it has indexed and uses algorithms (step-
by-step operations) to produce a list of sites—with the most relevant
websites at the top of the list.
 Bing
Microsoft’s search engine is the second most popular search engine in the world, with 15.8% of the
search market.
But why should you use Bing? Lifehacker has some great articles where they try to convince
themselves as much as anyone else why Bing is a serious contender to Google. Plus points include:
 
 Bing’s video search is significantly better than Google’s, giving you a grid of large thumbnails that you can
click on to play or preview if you hover over them.
 Bing often gives twice as many autocomplete suggestions than Google does.
 Bing can predict when airfares are about to go up or down if you’re searching for flights.
 Bing also has a feature where if you type linkfromdomain:[site name] it will highlight the best ranked
outgoing links from that site, helping you figure out which other sites your chosen site links to the most.

Also note that Bing powers Yahoo’s search engine

Fact-Checking Sites
 Full Fact Finder:
This U.K-based site cover information on the economy, health,
crime and the la, immigration, and education. “Search results offer
users general background information, as well as details on the sort
of data available in the area and links to statistics from official
bodies”

-Coverance from journalism.co.uk: Full Fact launches Online Fact-Finding Tool

Fact-Checking Sites
Emergent.Info:
The site’s tagline is “real-time rumor tracker.” For example, on April 1
2015, it checked whether a man was wanted in England for slapping people
who sneezed in public (true) and a claim that doctors had confirmed the first
death due to genetically modified food (false) The site is a part of a research
project of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that
focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media.

-Article from Craig Silverman, a fellow at the Tow Center: “Researching Rumors and Debunking for the Tow Center at Columbia University.”
Fact-Checking Sites

Lazy Truth:
An inbox extension that recognizes emails full of
potential myths, urban legends or security threats and
debunks them in your mail program. It currently works
only in Chrome and Gmail, but be expanded to other
browsers.

-Life Hacker Article: Lazy Truth Fact Checks Chain, Emails, Responds to the Sender with the Truth”
Fact-Correction Tools
 MediaBugs:
A service reporting specific, correctable errors and problems in media
coverage. “Well provide a neutral, civil, moderated discussion space, they
state. “Well try to alert the journalist or news organization involved about
your report and bring them into a conversation. As a result of this dialogue
between journalists and the public, some errors may get corrected; others
won’t. Either way, the discussion will leave a useful public record.”
  -NielmanLab article: MediaBugs“MediaBugs Rethinks Corrections by Taking a Page from Programmers”
Fact-Correction Tools

 Retwact:
A tool that automates the process of notifying anyone
retweeted inaccurate tweet from your account; the goal is to
help slow the spread of misinformation b making it easier to
correct tweets.
 
-Atlantic article: “Retwact: A tool for Fixing Twitter’s Misinformation Problem.”
Image Tools
 TinEye:
A reverse-image search engine, Tin Eye allows you to find out
where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified
versions exist, or to find higher-resolution versions. TinEye is the
first image search engine to use image-identification technology
rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for
non-commercial searching.
 
-IJNET article: “Journalist’s Guide to Verifying Images.”
Image Tools

Google Images:
With Google Images’ “Search by Image” option you can
upload an image and Google will show you any images that
resemble it. It is a quick way to easily track down original
source images, or spot modifications and edits to an image.
Image Tools

FourAndSix:
An extension for Adobe Photoshop, FourMatch analyses
open JPEG images to determine whether they are untouched
originals from a digital camera. As of April 2015 the service
had been discontinued, however, and once called lzitru was
recommended.
-Four and Six article on fake photos many of which were run by media organizations: “Photo Tampering through History.” 
Tips in Conducting Online Search

1. Have a question in mind

2. Narrow it down
3. Advance search
4. Look for credible search