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Disinformation and Misinformation (Buzzard)

A research guide for the disinformation and misinformation paper

3. Narrow Your Topic

Once you've done some initial background reading, it's time to narrow down your topic to what you really want to write about.  Remember your assignment requirements and consider what you've read so far.

Ask yourself:

  • Which digital literacy and misinformation issue are you interested in learning about?
  • What makes that issue interesting to you?
  • What factors influence the issue?
  • Is there more than one side to this issue? What are the opposing viewpoints on it?

Think how you can discuss the issue in your paper and consider what arguments you might want to make. 

 

Keywords

Keywords for your search will primarily be different forms or variations of the name of the issue you chose. If you are searching a phrase, put quotation marks around the phrase. For example:

How does digital literacy education in schools impact students' ability to identify misinformation online? 

Keywords for your search may be:

"digital literacy" AND education AND misinformation

Some other search terms may be "digital literacy" AND student AND misinformation 

Above, I replaced education with student. When performing keyword searches, use a variety of similar terms or synonyms.

Here is another example for using keyword searches for research.

In what ways do social media platforms contribute to the spread of misinformation, and what digital literacy skills are necessary to combat this? 

Keywords for this search may be:

"social media" AND misinformation

misinformation AND "digital literary skills"

"social media" AND misinformation AND "digital literacy"

Tip: Remember that when you are searching for a phrase, such as "digital literacy," it is important to put quotation marks around the phrase. This tells the database to search for that specific phrase in articles. If you did not include the quotation marks, the search might return articles about just digital or just literacy, but not "digital literacy." 

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search.  Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.

Subjects: English 101