Information Literacy Assignment 4: Integrating Quotations

Instructions

Part 1:
Go to the library and physically borrow or check out an electronic book relevant to your research
project. Read the introduction, conclusion, and at least one chapter from the book. Using your Everyday
Writer, cite the book in MLA 8 in the space provided. Select three sections of text from your reading
that accurately, thoroughly, and ethically represent the argument of the source. Using these sections of
text, create several quotations and write a 250-word paragraph explaining the books argument. Make
sure to properly use and integrate your quotes into the 250-word paragraph.

Part 2:
Complete each category in the space provided.
Authority: How does the author assure the reader that the information presented is accurate and
complete? Click through links, look up citations, or verify important facts in the book through a
web search. Are the links, citations, or facts presented accurate and relevant? Look up other
sources written by the same author or biographical information about the author. What are their
credentials?
Bias: Explain the commitments of the author. What do they stand to gain from writing this
source? Who is their audience, and how can you tell? What kinds of organizations, ideas, or
beliefs do they associate themselves with? How do you know? Are multiple viewpoints
presented and addressed, or only the viewpoints of the author?
Context: Examine the website, journal, or other context in which the article is written. Is this
context credible? How does this context assure the reader that the content it publishes is accurate
and well-researched? What sort of sources does this context generally use (i.e., scholarly
journals, popular press, twitter, etc.)? How do these factors shape your view of this context?
Date: What is the date in which the book was published, and how much does this matter for
your subject? Explain your reasoning.

Part 3:
Answer each reflection section in complete sentences in the space provided. You will need to look at
your ILP 1 and 2 in order to answer some questions.
Part 1: Citation & Summary
Citation: Beasley, Berrin A., and Haney, Mitchell R., eds. Social Media and Living Well. Blue Ridge
Summit, US: Lexington Books, 2015. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 28 March 2017.
Summary (250 words max. including quotations): In this book the Authors want to argue the role of
social media plays in affecting well-being. They help make this argument by splitting up the focuses of
well-being they first focus how social media effects the well-being of an individual, they then break up
examples of how this is affecting an individual into different sections. One such section is called the
Duplicity of Online Behavior which is making the distinction between deceiving someone in the real
world compared to deceiving one in the social media world, the purpose of which is to address how the
traditional understanding of the doing/allowing harm distinction fails to apply in cyberspace. (Ulatowski
35). The Authors then shift the focus to how social media effects the well-being of society, which is
broken up into sections the same way as individuals. A section from the society spectrum is the chapter
The Community of Sanity in the Age of the Meme the focus of this section is about the use of Memes
in our society and the effect that they have. It argues the negative affects of memes with two concerns,
Many memes promote types of reasoning which are not conducive to reasonable discussion of
important issues in our pluralistic society; and, Many memes vilify the Other in a way that
communicates that they are so different and so bad that they ought to be ignored or ostracized (Haney
72). With these examples and the rest of the other nonmentioned sections, the authors conclude with
stating their argument once more and covering briefly the topics it covered.

Part 2: Source Analysis (200 words max.)

Authority: The book has great authority it features a Contributor page that gives the background of
each of their sources of other studies conducted that they used for research and each
contributor is highly qualified. Some examples of their credentials include, PhDs in
media ethics, social science, and communication. All but one of the contributors are
professors and the one that isnt is a successful social and digital media executive.
Bias: I believe the commitments for this book is for profit and then a small bit for education.
I mainly argue this because the piece is fairly biased in the fact that it hardly mentions
the good of social media, almost all of the impacts mentioned in the book are negative.
I believe the audience is the common consumer or student; the language is easy to
understand. I believe the organization that made this book is most likely against social
media.
Context: The context is good it is a published book from a creditable publisher Lexington
Books. The only examples the book uses are all from scholarly articles written by
professors or the one media executive.
Date: The book was published in 2015. This matters greatly for the subject because since
social media goes hand in hand with technology it evolves at a very fast rate, one at
which something from 5 years ago will not be the same as it is now. Facebook now has
over a billion users in 2010 that number was only 400 million.
Part 3: Research Reflection (300 words max.)
1 What steps did you go through to locate this book? What kind of source is it (i.e., more
informative or opinionated)? What databases or search engines did you use? Was searching for
this source easier or more difficult than locating sources for ILP 1 & 2? Explain.
Response: What I did to find this book was I went to the USC Thomas Cooper Library website and
searched social media in the advanced search bar looking only for eBooks, found this book read the
intro and now were here. It is a very informative piece but it does contain some opinionated qualities
since it hardly talks about the positives of social media. I found looking for sources for both items were
at the same level of simplicity and difficulty. Once you get to the Catalog search it becomes all the
same.
2 What knowledge have you gained from reading this source compared to the sources you looked
at in ILP 1 & 2, and has this knowledge affected your beliefs? Explain.

Response:
Some knowledge that I have gained from reading this source is a lot of information regarding Social
media and society. A lot of my pervious sources were more individual based so this will help my paper.
This certain knowledge has not affected my beliefs too much, because I was maintaining neutrality on
the topic of social media, this source contains a lot of negativity but since I know of the positives of
social media I can keep those in account.

3 How can you use this source in your project? Which parts of the source are most useful for
your project and why? How does this source relate to the sources you found in ILP 1 & 2?

Response: I can use this source in my project with the examples of society being affected by social
media I can also use the individual focused areas of this source as well. The most useful are the society
examples because I did not have hardly any of those in the past. This relates to my other sources in the
fact that some of the negatives from both sources agree upon those negatives, but I also contain
positives for social media from the pervious sources that can help with a neutral paper.