JOUR 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Buzzfeed, Answers.Com, Ehow
9 May 2018
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JOUR 302-Lecture #5
Today’s To-Do’s:
1. Bell work: What tricks do/might website content creators use to get more people to visit
their website? How does that relate to credibility?
2. Look at definition of content farms-and list of probable content farms.
3. Find a partner. One of you get papers from the front for partner discussions. SHARE
OUT.
4. Distribute cheat sheet- set up news aggregators.
5. Model setting up news aggregators.
6. Set up at least two news aggregators.
7. Due Tuesday: credibility paper assigned on Jan. 30th
Question: What tricks do/might website content creators use to get more people to visit their
website?
• Gimmicks
• Headline tricks you
• Design an URL that looks credible
• Design webpage in a way similar to another credible site
• Personality quizzes
Content Farms
• In the context of the World Wide Web, a content farm (or content mill) is a company
that employs large numbers of freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual
content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by
automated search engines.
o Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader
page views.
o Example: BuzzFeed, Answers.com, ChaCha, eHow
Through the marketplace of ideas, a theory will rise.
• Capitalism
• Competing for consumers of your information
• The perfect crime: it works
o How many people do you think search on the internet without even thinking
twice about it?
o What’s the danger in that?
▪ Example: Obama’s fake birth certificate that people still believe is real
