Your fact check is due on October 20. But, you definitely want to get a fair amount done before then. To help ensure everyone is on the right track with the assignment and doesn’t miss any of the three requirements (each worth a third of the grade), we’re starting small now.

For this blog post, identify facts & opinions, verify the facts, and evaluate the sources from one paragraph of your classmate’s Knowledge Paper draft. Be sure to categorize it as Blog Post 7 and include the paper topic and “Sample Fact Check” in the title. While I normally discourage students from putting an assignment name in a blog post title, I fear we will have a lot of similar titles by the end of the semester if we don’t in this case.

I am including the one-paragraph fact check we did in class on Monday, September 29 below as an example.

If you haven’t yet been assigned a specific paper to review, be sure to email me when your draft is ready. I will send you that assignment then.

Original Paragraph:

According to Turel & Cavagnaro (2018), social media addiction is defined as follows:
Social media “addiction” (also can be termed excessive or problematic use of
social media) is a psychological state of dependence in which users are overly preoccupied with social media activities, and are driven by an uncontrollable motivation to use social media sites, to such an extent that it interferes with normal functioning and generates behavioral addiction-like symptoms. (p. 218)
The researchers also note that despite the fact that there is no official way to diagnose a social media addiction, it is widely believed that it primarily impacts adolescents and young adults. Unsurprisingly, young adults are the most “at-risk for social media addiction” or at least most likely to present addiction-like symptoms (Turel & Cavagnaro, 2018, p. 218). Consequently, this means that young adults are also the most at risk to experiencing the harmful effects that social media can cause.

Everything in the above paragraph, except the word “Unsurprisingly” are facts. However, the idea that young adults are the highest at-risk group cannot be verified by the source. Turel and Cavagnaro (2018) only say that 15.2% of young adults are at risk, not that its the highest at-risk group.

The quoted text is in the source, on page 218 between footnotes 9-11 and FN 4. No official diagnosis claim is supported by the phrase: “given the non-existent formal diagnosis criteria” on the second line of the bottom paragraph of p. 218.

During class, we were unable to complete the CRAAP test to evaluate this academic article. However, we did address the first criteria of Currency.

• When was the information published or posted? 2019
• Has the information been revised or updated? No
• Is the information current or out of date for your topic? No

The last question for currency seemed irrelevant to this source. We gave the source a nine out of ten for Currency. Then we discussed that IF the other categories also earned 10s once we finished the full test, we would conclude our evaluation with a statement like this: “Final score, 50. According to the CRAAP test, it is an excellent source.”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H0A6xXTXkHZCYh4H2lhDYd1HGTgWfCEvjVlQoyZsmfM/edit?usp=sharing