Research on the internet is a good way to give you a preliminary background and knowledge on a topic that you intend to study and research.
Of course, serious academic research should be obtained through using books and peer-reviewed academic journals, and through gathering empirical data on your own. The internet, though, is a good place to start gathering information, especially if you don't know much about your topic.
When evaluating research sources on the internet, there are three issues to be aware of:
An authority is a person or organization with recognized and official expertise on a certain topic in a particular field.
IN CONTEXT
Modern society is full of authority figures. We've divided knowledge and knowledge production into various offices, each with its own authority. We have doctors, we have professors--these are very specialized authorities on every topic imaginable. However, not all authority figures are equal.
IN CONTEXT
Suppose you are a sociologist who is interested in doing research on global warming and the environmentally motivated social movements that have sprung up in response to issues of global warming. You want to learn more about global warming, so you Google it.
You find a geologist--say Phil Johnson is his name--who has a website, a blog, and a book that all state that global warming has absolutely no connection to human industrial activity. Well, Phil Johnson is an authority figure. He's got a PhD in geology and likely knows what he's talking about with respect to climate change--all credible enough, correct?
You do more research on Phil, look at his book, his career, his biography, and you find out that he worked as a prospector, prospecting oil fields for Exxon Mobil for the first 20 years of his career. Do you think that Phil might be biased by that contact and influence with Exxon Mobil? Does he still have merit as an authority?
You might question his standing as an authority figure on account of potential bias.
IN CONTEXT
Because you're concerned about Phil's potential bias, you investigate the source of his information, by looking at his citations. You find that Phil primarily cites studies that have been funded by Exxon Mobil itself and carried out by private research firms, not research universities.
Even though Phil is technically an authority figure and has a PhD in geology, he might be motivated by bias, having worked for Exxon Mobil and carrying out and citing research that has been conducted by private research firms, research that was funded by Exxon Mobil.
What is your conclusion? Perhaps you shouldn't trust Phil as an authority figure. Perhaps you shouldn't trust his research as a source for your knowledge. You constantly have to be thinking critically about the sources you use.
Academics do their research and fill their citations with books and peer-reviewed journal articles--peer-reviewed, meaning that they go through a process whereby everybody reviews it to ensure it is valid. In any one 30-page article that a sociologist will write, there will probably be a hundred citations in that article--it's extremely thorough.
Source: This work is adapted from Sophia author Zach Lamb.
