When searching using Reddit.com I did not find anything
specific that would help me with my research topic. I found a few pictures of
Adolf Hitler at all different ages but that does not really help me
specifically with my topic. When I searched on Facebook all I found were pages
that people made about Adolf Hitler, most all of them were “fan pages” and had
no useful information that I could use. I found that I could click on Web
results on Facebook when I searched something but that ultimately gave me the same
information I already have. I did not
find stumbleupon.com useful for my research topic either. On the interests page
when you first sign up there was no interest for history, and the pages that
came up for psychology were mostly games and IQ quizzes, which had nothing to
do with my topic whatsoever. I have found that researching my topic on social
media websites will most likely not be successful because my topic is mainly a
history related topic. I don’t really take part in a lot of social media websites,
besides blogging for this class I mainly use Facebook for personal activities.
I had the same problem while searching for relevant information on my topic, anesthesia, using these social media sites. No crucial information, or even any information that sparked my interest came up unfortunately. I think we are in the same boat as far as it goes with sticking to more scholarly sources!
ReplyDeleteWhitney (and Jessica), good discussion and you've identified some key points to the best uses of social media tools as information sources. In your case Whitney, since the overwhelming majority of content that is shared on Reddit and Facebook is time-sensitive (breaking news, latest developments, etc) it will probably not be easy to find much on such a historical topic. And Stumbleupon is billed as a "discovery engine" and as you noted, it has much more than articles and many more trivial types of sources (games, quizzes etc). In contrast, others who had more current and political topics, these same networks can be hugely effective for finding new information. Of course, by getting more used to these networks and spending more time searching them, you might be able to find some good sources. For example, there are probably some history "subreddits" that would take a more broad perspective and maybe even share research. But as Jessica commented, it wouldn't be the best use of your time and you will likely do a lot better to stick to other platforms (databases, library catalogs, Google) for your information.
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