Find Websites - ART 207 / WGS 207 - Women and Media - Professor Trager

Internet Search Engines

Try some of the Internet Search Engines below:

Google - Advanced Search
Provides more control with many options for making your searches more precise and getting more useful results.
Google Scholar
Searches scholarly research and resources.

Evaluate

WHY? Rationale for Evaluating What You Find on the Web

The World Wide Web can be a great place to accomplish research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated, and unmonitored.

• Documents can easily be copied and falsified or copied with omissions and errors -- intentional or accidental.

• In the general World Wide Web there are no editors (unlike most print publications) to proofread and "send it back" or "reject it" until it meets the standards of a publishing house's reputation.

• Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view.

• Even within university and library web sites, there can be many pages that the institution does not try to oversee.

The web needs to be free like that! And you, if you want to use it for serious research, need to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism, of questioning everything you find with critical thinking.Therein lies the rationale for evaluating carefully whatever you find on the Web.

The burden is on you - the reader - to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find.

Internet Sites

Surfing the Web

The Internet can be a valuable source for supplementing the information you have gathered from books and periodicals.

However, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you EVALUATE THE INFORMATION you get from the Internet to determine if it is reliable and useful to your research.

Here are a few Internet sites to get you started with your assignment:

Media Smarts: Digital and Media Literacy
Home to one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of digital and media literacy resources.
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Various research reports on gender prevalence in family entertainment, including films and television by The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a non-profit research organization, that works collaboratively within the entertainment industry to create gender balance, foster inclusion and reduce negative stereotyping in family entertainment media.
Gender Inequality in Films
A 2018 infographic by the New York Film Academy on women in film and what, if any, advancements women are making.
Gender Stereotypes: The Global Status Quo in Film
A 2014/2015 study from the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on gender stereotypes in films from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom — as well as UK-US collaborations.
Mass Media: The Image, Role, and Social Conditions of Women: A collection and analysis of research materials
This is a pdf of a research paper on how mass media in North America, Western Europe, and Latin America portrayed women through images and what sort of professional status women had in mass media in those areas.
The Status of Women in U.S. Media 2019
A report by the Women's Media Center (WMC), a nonprofit organization working to raise the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.
Media Report to Women
Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film
The Center generates a number of large annual studies documenting women’s representation and portrayals, as well as substantial investigations of the business environment surrounding women in film and television.
CulturalPolitics
CulturalPolitics.net is a not-for-profit matrix of sites curated, written and managed by T.V. Reed, a Buchanan Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Studies and English at Washington State University. These sites are designed to provide information from a variety of sources including academics, journalists, independent scholars, and commercial sites for anyone interested in learning more about popular culture, digital cultures, social movements, environmental justice, and/or cultural theory.
How Pop Culture Enforces Gender Stereotypes
Women's Roles in Films
This website shows a comparison of women's roles in film starting in the 1920's up to the present day.
Getty Research Portal
A free online search platform providing worldwide access to an extensive collection of digitized art history texts from a range of institutions.

Evaluating Internet Sites - Step by Step

Countless web pages are available on just about every topic, but how can you know what's worthwhile or credible?Evaluation of web pages and websites has become a necessary part of the research process, and a means to sharpen your own critical thinking skills. Some of the fundamental questions to consider during evaluation are:

AUTHORSHIP Note that "author" can mean a person or organization.	Who is the author of the website? What are the author's credentials? Is the author an authority on the subject? Is it another student? A professor? Your next door neighbor? Is the author an organization? What do you know (or what can you find out) about this organization? What is its purpose?
ACCURACY Information must be judged accurate and verifiable before you use it in your own research or assignments.	Is the site edited well? Are there spelling or grammatical errors? Is it written in a style that you would expect for the topic and audience? Don't accept the information at face value - you'll need to take time to consult other sources (including non-web sources) to verify accuracy fully Does the information on the site "fit" with other information that you have on the topic? Or are there discrepancies with other sources of information? Does the author provide a way to verify information on this site? Are footnotes, citations, or sources provided?
CURRENCY Look at both the date of publication and update, as well as the dates for any cited information.	Is the page or website being updated and maintained? When was the page written? Last updated or revised? How current is the information? Does this fit your needs? Note that website content written in May 2008 might contain information from 1975. Be aware that "Last updated" may mean any update on the page, including stylistic changes such as different colors or layout - not necessarily changes to content.
CONTENT Does the information on the website meet your research or information needs?	How detailed is the information - is it basic or advanced? Is the coverage of the topic complete? Does it leave out important information? Does it offer more than one perspective? Is the web page part of a longer document? Sometimes you will need to look at more than one page to get the complete picture. Is there a bibliography or links to other information on the topic? How were the links selected? Are the other sources mentioned relevant and credible? How does the content compare with other resources (books, journal articles, other web pages) on the same topic?
PURPOSE The purpose of the site should be clear. Be aware that some sites present opinion as fact in order to sell or persuade.	Does this site present fact or opinion? What is the purpose of the site? To inform? To sell? To persuade? Is the site objective, showing multiple sides of an issue? Bias is not necessarily reason to reject a source - but be sure that you can identify it. Who is the intended audience? Advanced researchers in a field? Elementary school students? Members of a particular organization or viewpoint? If there is advertising on the page, does this affect the content?
DESIGN Visual layout, choice of images and media files often have an impact on a website's professional credibility.	What kind of information - textual, visual, aural - does the page present, and does this add or detract from the page's usefulness or legibility? Do image or other media files slow down load time or navigation through the website? Do the different design components work, or are images, sound files, etc. unable to display, play, or run? Does the web page require specific add-on software in order to read, see, print, or listen to resources linked on the page? Is that add-on software readily available or must it be purchased?

ART 207 / WGS 207 - Women and Media - Professor Trager: Find Websites

Internet Search Engines

Evaluate

Internet Sites

Evaluating Internet Sites - Step by Step

ACCURACY
Information must be judged accurate and verifiable before you use it in your own research or assignments.

CURRENCY

CONTENT

PURPOSE

DESIGN

ART 207 / WGS 207 - Women and Media - Professor Trager: Find Websites

Internet Search Engines

Evaluate

Internet Sites

Evaluating Internet Sites - Step by Step

ACCURACY Information must be judged accurate and verifiable before you use it in your own research or assignments.

CURRENCY

CONTENT

PURPOSE

DESIGN

ACCURACY
Information must be judged accurate and verifiable before you use it in your own research or assignments.