Practical 7 - Evaluation of Citizen Journalism

My group evaluated STOMP with the criteria "Authority" and "Accuracy".


For Authority, we have to check for these few things:

• Reputation of the creator - subject expert or by an institution with recognized knowledge and expertise
• Reputation of the publisher, sponsors or funding agencies
• Authority and reputation can be verified
• Author can be contacted for clarification
• Sources of information clearly stated
• Reviews are available
• Counter on the site that reflects the popularity of a source

While for Accuracy, we have to check for these few things:

• Factual accuracy (or opinion)
• Research basis
• Contents with political, ideological, or biasness
• Cited references
• Evidence of quality control e.g. refereeing or editing
• Source of information e.g. an independent piece or an abstract from another source
• Grammatical, spelling and typographical errors

From today's activity, we learnt that STOMP is both a biased and unbiased website. Some articles were posted up by normal citizens, while some others were by professionals.

To recap, my research topic was "Discuss the trends and developments on animation industry in Japan". If I were to create my own version of STOMP regarding to my topic, I would allow the public only to leave their views in the comments section. However the articles posted would have to be by professionals with source of information, references, etc.

To facilitate teaching and learning, I would include topics which are from recent news/articles from the internet. This is just so people could keep in touch with the Anime industry.