Digital Investigator Training

Author Investigation

Investigate the Author | Bias in Digital Resources | Linkto: Credibility

Assignment: Can I Trust This Author?

It is up to you to check an author's trustworthiness. Investigating the author will help you evaluate the honesty and fairness of information found on a Web page. For this research project, the authors in question are those who wrote the five sources you gathered about the importance of your selected author.

First, study this Author Micromodule

Author Tutorial

Investigative Example

One of these three authors is a phony. Find proof that one of the authors is a fake.

• Shakespeare Authorship
• Shakespeare's Life and Times
• Literary Dialogs: Dr. Marcus Letter

To do this, find the author's name for each page. Here are their names from searching the three pages: Lee Jamieson, Michael Best and Marcus Letter. Use each name as a separate query (include Shakespeare in the query) to discover what information is available. Jamieson is an author who has presented on Shakespeare for the Shakespeare Oxford Society [source]. Best is a professor at the University of Victoria and has authored numerous works on Shakespeare [source]. Letter is referenced in an evaluation of plagiarism for his work on Shakespeare [source]. This raises a red flag. Digging deeper, other evidence from Letter's biography can't be fact checked. For example: the university he claims to have attended doesn't exist, as a quick fact check for semi-national university reveals. Another red flag. Have serious doubts about this author.

Use the worksheet below to capture your work

Download the Worksheet

Write down the following:

Choose one of the Webpages you collected earlier. Find the author of that page or document
Describe that author's credentials (education, career, experience)
Describe other works that author has written
Describe any red flags you may find
Describe how you found your information

Check Your Understanding

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