Managing Media Literacy Module 9A – Comprehensive Study Notes

Lesson Objectives

• By the end of the module you should be able to:
  • Search for items on a specific Web site.
  • Search for items using search engines.
  • Use integrated or stand-alone tools to narrow search criteria.
  • Evaluate the validity of located information.
  • Explain what copyright and fair-use include.
  • Define intellectual property (IP).
  • Recognize acts of censorship or filtering.
  • Explain plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Searching for Information on the Web

• No central organization moderates or validates Internet content; quality varies widely.
• Common sources and their typical content/uses:
  • Wikis, blogs, forums: community-driven knowledge & opinions.
  • Educational sites: formal, often peer-reviewed material.
  • Social-media sites: real-time public sentiment, personal experiences.
  • Business sites: product, service, and corporate data.
  • Government sites: laws, statistics, public-service info.
• Best practice: cross-reference multiple sites and non-Web sources (e.g., libraries, scholarly journals) before accepting a claim.

Using Search-Engine Technology

Core Tasks of a Search Engine

• Crawl the Internet to locate pages containing key words.
• Build & maintain an index of those key words.
• Display ranked links that match a query.
• Each index record stores: URL, page title, description, author-supplied/auto-generated key words, plus meta data.

Basic Searching Steps

1. Click inside the search field.
2. Enter key word(s) — suggested completions may appear.
3. Accept a suggestion or finish typing, then press ENTER.

Narrowing Results by File Type

• Enter key word(s) ➔ click the desired file-type filter (e.g., Images, PDFs, Videos) to restrict hits to that format.

Boolean Operators (NOT case-sensitive)

• AND – Returns pages containing all specified terms.
• OR – Returns pages containing either term.
• NOT – Excludes pages containing the term placed after NOT (often paired with AND).
• NEAR – Returns pages where terms appear within $10$ words of each other.

HTML-Object / Advanced Operators (examples)

• anchor: – tours anchor:craters → pages whose hyperlink text includes craters within pages about tours.
• host: – hockey host:rogers.com → hockey pages served from any host containing rogers.com.
• image: – craters image:siberia → pages that embed images of Siberian craters.
• link: – surface link:microsoft.com → pages about the Surface tablet linking to Microsoft.com.
• site: – gs5 site:ccilearning.com → GS5-related pages within CCI Learning’s domain.

Advanced-Search Pages

• Provide separate fields (e.g., all these words, exact phrase, last update, domain, language) so users can combine multiple criteria without memorizing operators.

Researching Information: AAOCC Evaluation Framework

• Accuracy – Are facts verifiable and free of error?
• Authenticity – Is the author a credible expert/source?
• Objectivity – Is information presented without bias?
• Currency – Is the material up-to-date?
• Coverage – Is the topic treated in enough depth & breadth?
• Strategy: Compare each Web source against library holdings, peer-reviewed journals, and reference books.

Resources: Definitions & Categories

• Resource (general) – Any asset a company can apply to boost production or profit: land, labor, capital, raw materials.

Physical Resources

• Tangible; easily inventoried.
• Lifecycle: acquisition → assembly → on-hand use.

Conceptual Resources

• Intangible; valued for what they represent rather than physical form (e.g., patents, brand identity, data).

Information as a Resource

• Information = validated facts about a subject.
• Data = raw facts; information = processed/organized data yielding added value.

Information Economics

• Experience goods – True quality can be judged only after purchase/use (e.g., software, movies).
  • Mitigation strategies: free trials, previews, strong branding, cultivated reputation.
• Virtual goods – $100\%$ non-physical; worth exactly what users are willing to pay (e.g., in-game items, NFTs).

Information Overload

• Causes:
  • Near-zero-cost duplication & transmission.
  • Proliferation of communication channels.
  • Rapidly growing historical archives.

Understanding Copyright & Related Issues

Intellectual Property (IP)

• Any creative work or invention belongs to its creator.
• IP is legally & economically valuable; copyright exists to protect it.
• Protection timeline: creation date ➔ author’s full lifetime ➔ $50$ years post-mortem (baseline in many jurisdictions).
• User responsibility: confirm permission before re-using any portion of a work.

Key Reference Sites (selected)

• $\texttt{whatiscopyright.org}$ – Plain-language explanations.
• $\texttt{copyright.gov}$ – U.S. Copyright Office resources & registration.
• $\texttt{copyright.com}$ – Copyright Clearance Center (licensing services).
• $\texttt{fairuse.stanford.edu}$ – Academic fair-use guidelines.
• $\texttt{wipo.int}$ – World Intellectual Property Organization (global treaties).

Licensing Models

• Grant explicit permission to use a product/service.
• Common forms:
  • Single-seat – one user, one device.
  • Volume / network – multiple installs within a cap.
  • Site – unlimited use at a single location/org.
  • SaaS / ASP – subscription, cloud-hosted.
  • Shareware – try-before-buy; honor-payment.
  • Freeware – zero-cost, limited/no support.
  • Bundle – packaged with hardware or another program.
  • Open-source – code made publicly available; various permissive or copyleft licenses (e.g., GPL, MIT).

Piracy

• Unauthorized use or reproduction of someone else’s IP.
• Classified as a federal crime; penalties up to $10$ years imprisonment (U.S.) plus heavy fines.

Censorship & Filtering

• Filters/blockers may restrict offensive/dangerous/exploitative content.
• Debate: Who decides what is objectionable? Balance between protection & free expression.
• Organizations may legally filter inbound/outbound traffic on their own networks.

Plagiarism

• Presenting another’s text, images, video, or audio as original work.
• Ethically equivalent to theft; violates academic & professional codes.
• Best practices:
  • Use material in its original form.
  • Provide full citations (author, title, URL, date accessed, etc.).
  • When modifying, clearly indicate adaptations and still cite the source.