Evaluation of General Sources

            Having to go through all the details of each webpage while researching for more articles, I was able to become more efficient while conducting research. I was also able to tel which sites are trustworthy and which ones I probably should stay away from. Links for articles are found in the responses.

Ali Zifan."File:Facebook New Logo (2015).svg" 7/3/2015 via Wikimedia Commons.
Public Domain License.

URL

            The first source is from npr.org. Since the website is a ".org" it is considered a top-level domain which are usually very trustworthy. NPR, aka, National Public Radio is a nationally accredited organization that anyone would consider a legitimate source.

             The second source is from nytimes.com. This website is a ".com" which is the most common internet domain level in the U.S. Whether a website in the commercial domain is considered reliable or not is really up to credibility of the organization associated with the page. Since this website is the New York Times, many would consider this a legitimate site for all of their information.

Author

            The authors for the first post are Camila Domonoske and Laura Wagner. Domoske has been working for NPR since Jaunary 2013 and has been Associate Director for Digital News for the last year and 10 months. Wagner has worked at NPR for the last 7 months and helps write and report breaking news stories and small news stories to the audience. Both writers are accredited reporters with extensive backgrounds.

           The second source's authors are Vindu Goel and Mike Isaac. Goel has been working with New York Times since 2008 and Isaac for almost 2 years. Both have backgrounds in writing/reporting and cover the social media aspect of the New York Times.

Last Updated

            The first article was updated on January 30th, 2016 at 1:53 p.m. which is super recent. The information is up to date and accurate. The second article was uploaded on January 29th, 2016 and has not been updated. For now the information on the website should be correct.

Purpose

            Both articles have the sole purpose of informing the general public that Facebook intends to ban all private gun sales on its sit as well as Instagram. The NPR article talks about Facebook's past and present stance on private gun sales through their platforms. The New York Times article offers readers with various statements from different people on the situation.

Graphics

             The graphic provided in the NPR article seems sort of unnecessary. It is simply a photo of the Facebook application icon with the edges blurred. It proves to be of no significance and the article could do without it. The New York Times article provides two graphics, one is a screenshot of a gun seller's Facebook page and the other is of Mark Zuckerberg giving a speech. The first image is relevant to the article and gives the audience insight to what a gun seller's Facebook page looks like. The image of Zuckerberg is said to be of him in response to Obama's call to curb unlicensed gun sales, which would make the image relevant, however, it does not improve the article in any way.

Position On Subject

            The article provided by National Public Radio is very straightforward and feeds the reader facts. It does not try to sway the reader into feeling some type of way about the subject. It states Facebook's stance on the situation from the past and the present.

            The article from the New York Times not only presents the facts of the situation, but they also include statements from various people about the situation. The comments tend to be in support of Facebook banning private gun sales on their site and Instagram. In a sense, it seems as though the NYT is trying to get the audience to empathize with the commentators rather than leaving it up to the reader to decide how they feel.

Links

            The NPR article includes 4 other links inside of its article. The first link is a link to the New York Times article that I am analyzing along with this article, showing that it is important. The second link sends the reader to a Facebook Newsroom article that also covers the subject, which expands on the situation. The other two links take the reader to articles about different shootings that happened. These articles are important because the shooters are linked to gun sales that happened through Facebook.

            The New York Times article had multiple links. A few just linked readers to anything related to Facebook or Instagram found in the New York Times. Since I don't have a subscription to the website, I couldn't view the articles, but from their titles I got a decent idea of what the articles were about. A couple were about how the government intends to crack down on gun sales and the last link was to an article about Facebook announcing the launch of local services site.