Social Media (Including blogs & aggregator sites like:
EXAMPLE:
WaPo Tiktok
|
|
-
Ordinary people
-
Editorial staff
-
Freelance writers
-
“Citizen journalists”
|
-
Personal testimony or photographs
-
Little additional evidence
-
Hyperlinks to news sources or scholarly articles
|
-
Super-short entries; a handful of characters or paragraphs
-
Published immediately as event occurs
-
Uses more casual & informal language
-
No specific standards in terms of format and content
|
Newspaper Sources
EXAMPLE:
The Washington Post
|
IDEALLY
|
- Journalists, who follow Standards of Practice
- Freelance writers
- Editorial staff
- Undergo more rigorous fact-checking process
|
- Quotations from event participants, witnesses, or subject experts
- Very little/no references or supporting sources
|
- Shorter articles
- Published or updated daily
- Use everyday language for more general audience
|
Magazines
EXAMPLE:
Time
|
- To provide more depth/broader scope on an issue
- To entertain & inform on current events
- To gain greater interest from audience than just providing facts
|
- Journalists who may have a special focus or area of interest
- Freelance writers
- Editorial staff
- Undergo fact-checking process
- Depending on type of magazine, can have a slant or perspective
|
- Interviews with event participants, witnesses, or subject experts
- Summaries of outside research
- Popularize a more esoteric/academic topic to general audience
|
- Short-to-medium length articles
- Published weekly or monthly
- Use everyday language for more general audience
|
Scholarly Journals
EXAMPLE:
Sociology of Education
|
- To share new discoveries & analysis with researchers, scholars, and other experts
- Participate in the scholarly conversation in order to…
- Contribute to the body of knowledge of an issue/topic/subject
- Can take an aspect of a topic and go deep
|
- Scholars & experts in a specialized field of study
- Undergo strict peer- review process that takes months to complete
- Can be longitudinal study over time
- Can be original research (primary source)
|
- Citations of earlier/prior research
- Descriptions of original research methods
- Statistics & charts document original findings
|
- Lengthy articles
- Published quarterly or biannually
- Use highly specialized language
- Include long reference lists
- Higher degree of reliability, credibility, and accuracy
|
Books
EXAMPLE
Why Dance Matters
|
- To provide a lengthy, thorough examination of a topic
- NOT all books are the same; nonfiction vs fiction, more academic vs more popular, big press vs self-published, etc.
|
- Often, experts on specialized topics
- Can undergo extensive research, writing & editing process that can
- take years to complete
|
- Varies but may include in-depth interviews, analysis of outside research, and/or citations
|
- 100+ pages long
- Published one time following years of work
- Sometimes scholarly
language, sometimes everyday language, depending on the purpose of the book and the intent of the author
|