Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
These examples demonstrate both positive and negative aspects
of the comparison between Webbased materials and traditional
(printed) sources. Traditional sources often utilize an extensive
process of review, selection, and editing. For this reason, readers
come to expect and depend on the reliability and accuracy of infor
mation provided by printed sources. For various practical reasons,
not all legitimate information may be represented in published
sources, but reviewing tends to filter out incorrect or misguided re
search.
In contrast, information posted on the World Wide Web can be
posted by anyone and is not subject to filtering or review. This
openness allows access to a remarkable diversity of materials, but it
also allows questionable information to appear. With such a range
of quality and accuracy, you need to be particularly careful to ana
lyze Webbased materials before accepting their statements.
information?
As just discussed, the Web contains materials of varying in
tegrity and accuracy, and different factors need to be considered be
fore accepting materials as valid representations of data. One vari
able that must be taken into consideration is the concept of
bias
.
The Random House
College Dictionary, Revised Edition
(1984) de
fines bias as “a tendency or inclination of outlook; a subjective
point of view.” Each of us has her or his own perspective, beliefs,
and backgrounds; this experience provides a bias. In our writing, we
may try to be objective, but we always are making such choices as
what to include, what to omit, what words to use, and what style to
follow. This is not to suggest that a bias is necessarily bad; rather,
we need to recognize that personal elements color our writing, in
print and on the Web.
Sometimes an author's biases may be largely tangential to an is
sue, sometimes the biases may be at only an unconscious level,
sometimes the author recognizes the biases and works to set those
aside when preparing materials, and sometimes the biases may be a
prime motivating factor in the preparation of material.
Unfortunately, few Web pages indicate explicitly what these biases
