A Brief Guide to Internet Research
Since the World Wide Web was opened to the public in 1991, every year has brought us closer to having access to all human knowledge. While many of us take this abundance of information for granted, it is amazing to see how much information there actually is.
According to Internet Live Stats, a website of the Real Time Statistics Project, there are more than 4 billion internet users worldwide, who have created almost 2 billion websites so far. Every second, the Internet facilitates more than 8,000 tweets, 70,000 Google searches, 2.7 million emails (of which two-thirds are spam) and 63,000 GB of traffic (October 2018). That’s a lot of data and, in many cases, knowledge!
The growth rate of these numbers is unbelievable as well. While Google already served 10,000 search queries per day in the year it was founded (1998), it would manage the same amount in one second by the end of 2006. In 2012, Google reported 1.2 trillion searches per year.
All in all, it is very clear that there is a lot of data on the Internet and, through interconnecting this data, we can access and create more knowledge than ever before. The challenge that online researchers face today, however, is to find the right piece of information among the petabytes of irrelevant data. This article aims to guide you through the mist of the World Wide Web and provides a general strategy for researching any topic online.
Getting Started
Before the Internet, people used to do research in libraries, or through other non-digital methods, and some research was not done at all since it would have been too complex. If researchers of the non-digital ages did not know where to start, they would usually consult an encyclopedia, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica. Nowadays, in the digital age, it is not much different, albeit the encyclopedia being in a digital format and much more powerful.
Wikipedia is one of the most important creations of our time. It gives free access to unimaginable amounts of knowledge to anyone who is interested. While it has initially been criticized for its approach to let anyone edit any page, the number of contributors and the pride of Wikipedia administrators have made it one of the last sources of objective truth in an Internet full of conspiracy theories and fake news.
Therefore, when I start researching a new topic, I start with the respective Wikipedia page, even if I already know quite a bit about the topic. Besides being generally well-structured and easy to understand, Wikipedia articles provide references to in-depth resources, which one should use to dive deeper into the topic. In addition, the references on a Wikipedia page might lead an author to academic papers that he or she did not know before.
How to Use Google
While Wikipedia is the tool I use to start my research, Google is the tool that facilitates almost everything else during the process.
Most people who use Google every day only do simple searches — and many times that is enough. If one needs to do in-depth research on a certain topic, however, it is invaluable to know all the extra functions that Google offers to make search results even more precise. As a result, there are many guides online, which explain search operators and other functionalities, such as this one by Google, this one by Time Magazine, or this one by Lifehack.
Make sure that you know the most important hacks, operators, shortcuts, and converters to access the full power of the search bar. While it is possible to find the information you need with a ‘normal’ search query, it will take longer in most cases and can become quite frustrating.
Academic Resources
Academic papers have always been the sources that journalists liked the most, as it is usually hard to argue with them. Recently, however, it has become clear that many journalists are unable to differentiate between a true scientific theory and something that some self-proclaimed scientist said. Especially the ‘debate’ on global climate change shows this problem.
To not become someone who spreads fake academic claims, you need to understand the scientific process. The most important aspect of this process is peer review and you should never reference a scientific claim that did not go through this process. Peer review means that a community of experts has checked the underlying science and, while it does not prevent invalid claims to be published, it makes it very rare. Generally speaking, you should check all your sources by evaluating their credibility and by detecting potential biases before publishing anything.
But where do you find academic papers online? This is the easy part. There are many great search engines, such as Google Scholar, that you can use. The website TeachTought compiled a list of 100 search engines for academic research, which has been more than enough for me.
Referencing Online News
Referencing news articles has become a challenge in recent years since even the self-proclaimed media elite has fallen victim to fake news and conspiracy theories. As a result, it is more important than ever to check your sources.
A simple way to predict if something is true or not is to evaluate the actual source. Where did the media outlet get the information and how many other outlets reported on the issue? Did they use peer-reviewed scientific research as their source?
To be absolutely sure, however, I try to double-check the most controversial issues with a fact-checking website, such as Snopes or FactCheck.org. These websites are researching the facts for us and use a transparent methodology for their process. Sometimes you might even find additional sources for your article when you look something up on a fact-checking service.
But it is also important how you link to your sources: If one references sources on the internet, these sources might disappear later and produce dead links. Therefore, it is advisable to link sources that might vanish, especially news articles, through the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine is an archive of the World Wide Web, which is managed by the Internet Archive and contains more than 25 petabytes of data. It stores old versions of web pages, which might be helpful if a page has been changed or removed. You can also use this tool to find old versions of pages that you cannot access anymore.
Images and Other Media
In today’s online world, it is very important to visualize the information one would like to convey and this is especially true for journalists. While humans retain only 20% of the information they read, they retain 80% of the visual information. So, if you do not know how to make great infographics, at least add some images to your articles!
If you started your research on Wikipedia, you might have seen some images you would like to use already. After all, most Wikipedia articles feature some picture or video. These files are hosted on Wikimedia Commons, a collection of over 50 million media files, which you can use freely. These images, sounds, and videos are mostly scientific, though, and if you are looking for something more artistic you might want to search for professional stock images.
My favorite sources for free stock images are Unsplash and Pexels, but there is a wide variety of similar services around. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to search multiple pages until the perfect image is found. When you add the image to your article, make sure to reference the artist. Even when this is not required, it helps the artist to extend his or her reach and, after all, they supplied you with a beautiful image for free!
Did I forget something? Are there any tools I did not mention? Let me know by replying to this article. I am looking forward to the conversation!
