PROJECT 1:
A WEBSITE OF MISINFORMATION
CSE100/INFO100
Fluency with Information Technology
Copyright and Fair Use of Text and
Images
Class Policy on Cooperation and
Collaboration
Part A: Due Thursday, October 17th, 11
PM
Part B: Due Thursday, October 24th, 11
PM
What does it mean to have “photographic proof” of an event? Twenty years ago, photographs were taken at
face value. A photograph could serve as
evidence for what it pictured: certain people or things had been in a
particular place, together, at a particular time, doing particular
activities.
What does it mean to publish valid and authentic papers? Factual reports and
accounts of current events? For
many, many years traditional publishing houses [for books, research journals,
government documents, and magazines] have used well-established criteria for
validating and authenticating the materials they print. A publishing house print or media signature
carried meaning about the level and rigor of review for the content – with some
imprints conveying greater rigor (e.g., The MIT Press, NPR) than others (e.g., The
National Inquirer).
This world of twenty or more years ago, while far from being perfect, did
have the benefits of being able to validate content at a glance. That’s the upside. The downside was the barriers to
publication. If your ideas were not
“accepted” or “validated” by the various review boards, your options for
publication and dissemination could be limited.
A case in point: Albert Einstein’s original paper on relativity was turned
down by numerous scientific and mathematical journals.
Enter the Digital Age, the
Internet and the World Wide Web.
Technology provides unprecedented opportunities for self-publishing and
freedom of expression. If Einstein was
alive today, he could post his findings on relativity on a Web site and his
ideas would instantly be available to billions of individuals across the
globe. That’s the upside. But, with unchecked self-publishing comes
the downside of content that has never been edited to check for authenticity,
for completeness, etc. How is the
typical user who down loads a page from the Web to distinguish between the
careful considerations of a scientist like Einstein and those of an amateur
science fiction writer? Or if the user
is looking for travel information or stock recommendations or whatever you wish
to fill in here, how is the user to know that information is current, accurate,
and complete? With the advent of digital
images that can be easily manipulated (and as you will experience in lab), even
photographs that previously might have served as “supporting evidence” are
called into question.
In the world we live in today, where the opportunities for
self-expression are seemingly endless, how do we discriminate between truth and
fiction? Information
and misinformation? What are the
ethical limits on how content should be manipulated? Project 1 is designed to help you experience
first hand the issues surrounding authenticity and self-expression. Remember that on the Web, the motivation for
publishing misinformation does not always have to be intentional
misdirection. Many, many sites contain
inaccurate information that is published with the best intentions.
Now
fast forward to September, 2001 where technology and terrorism crossed paths on
The
Current Situation
Since September 11th of last year our world has been turned
upside down by surreal events that defy imagination. Two of the world’s tallest buildings reduced
to rubble and thousands killed. The
story itself seams unreal to those of us who hear of it from afar. It is only those who visited Ground Zero in
the weeks after the attack who could truly understand the enormity of the
destruction and the inability of any medium to truly capture the horror. During those frantic months which have
produced, quite literally, BILLIONS of words of information and thousand upon
thousands of pictures, two patterns have emerged that are neither tied
together, nor totally separate.
First: Information is disappearing.
Out of concern for National Security, thousands of web pages and web sites have
gone dark-pulled from the WWW for various reasons. Information that has traditionally been
publicly accessible by any citizen is being pulled, not only from web sites,
but from libraries and government installations. Read The Information Wars at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/09/graham.htm
for more details.
Second: Misinformation is spreading like wildfire
Misinformation, little white lies, selective dissemination of facts, while not
new, has been brought into the limelight because of the global attention
surrounding 9/11. Not only do
counter-intelligence agencies use the media to broadcast reports that may or
may not be completely factual, but the average person now has the same
opportunity.
In this project, your challenge is to create a Web site of
“misinformation” that appears as authentic as possible to the user. That is, while the content of your Web site
will be questionable, everything else about your Web site should convey the
opposite. The only limitations to your
topics are these:
Overall steps [These will be broken down into 2 parts for
submission. Read those directions
carefully]:
(1)
Locate a
digital photograph that is public domain or copyright free from an online or
other source (you can take your own digital picture if you have access to a
digital camera).
(2)
Using Adobe
Photoshop (or some other image design software), modify that photograph in a
subtle but significant way.
(3)
Create some
text, “the story”, to support your modified image.
(4)
Put your text
and image together on a Web site that appears as authentic as possible.
(5)
Test your Web
site with at least two individuals to see how successful you are at conveying
the authenticity of your “fictional” content.
(6)
Publish the
results of your tests along with a summary of your findings.
The content of your website of misinformation should permit comfortable
viewing by everyone in the course. If
you’re unsure about the “tastefulness” of any particular content, it is
probably a good idea to talk with your instructor or TA first, or choose
something else. Here are some possible
ideas:
Assignment 1 provides practice for searching for public domain or
copyright free images online as well as information about what constitutes
copyright of an image on the Web.
Assignment 2 provides web content evaluation techniques that you can use
when it comes time to test your site.
The Web site should be in your Dante web space (public_html
or student_html), but should be in a separate
directory (folder) within that web area.
Create 2 new directories within your public_html. Name one directory
info1a; name the other directory info1b.
The page(s) you will create for Part A should be placed
in your info1a directory. The page(s)
you will create for Part B should be placed in your info1b directory. DO NOT create any files with names that begin with
“index”, such as index.html, index.htm, etc in
either of the folders. Use the
exact spelling and capitalization given on the directories above so people
(such as course staff!) can find your sites easily. Other file names within the
two directories can be whatever you choose.
Make sure the directory and the files in it all have general Unix Read
permissions (you will know if they do not when you try to look at your web page
on line and receive a “permission denied” message).
Once the due date has come and gone, do NOT alter your files again in any
way. Files with a modification date
later than the due date will be considered late, and your freebie will be
used. Files that are modified more than
24 hours after deadline will not be graded.
Any changes you make between the due date and receiving your grade for
that project piece will eliminate any position you may have to question the
grade. Once Part A is complete, you
should not need to touch the files in the info1a directory again. If you need to make copies of those files to
modify and use for part B, do so and place them in the info1b directory.
·
To design and
implement a Web site using HTML
·
To manipulate a
photograph in Adobe Photoshop (or some other photo manipulation program)
·
To experience first
hand the ease with which “misinformation” can be made available online
·
To become aware of and
systematically explore the “cues” that users may use to assess the content of a
Web site
·
To conduct user
testing to evaluate your Web site
·
To reflect on the
challenges for misinformation online
·
Ultimately, to become
an appropriately cautious user of online information
Images and other files and content on the Internet
are protected in the same way as print materials and photographs. Use of digital images for purposes of
alteration and display on the Internet has limited coverage under the
conditions of fair use.
See the Four Factor Fair Use test at: [http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/copypol2.htm]
and the readings assigned for Assignment 1.
Public Domain items are those in which the
copyright has been lost, has expired, or the author of the work makes no
copyright claims to reproductions or enhancements of the work. Photographs taken by Federal Workers and posted
on Federal Government sites are public domain.
Photographs posted on City, County, and State sites have varying
copyright policies but tend to fall in line with Federal copyright guidelines. ALWAYS note the copyright
policy of ANY site you visit, regardless of its status as a
commercial, non-profit, government, or educational site.
If you use an image of a person for reasons of
making a profit, you are responsible for obtaining permission from the person
or their heirs. If you use a trademark
image, you must also get permission.
It is valuable to work with a friend or
classmate when learning a new application or working out a problem. However,
the work that you perform in FIT100 for a grade must be your own work unless
"working in groups" is explicitly allowed. The Projects involved in FIT 100 are NOT
intended to be group projects. It is OK
to run ideas and scenarios past your friends or classmates, but the solution
you create should be based on what is inside your own head. One way that you may collaborate is to connect
to a classmate’s project as one of the “sources” that back up your
information. In other words, you may do
a misinformation site on smoking and your classmate / friend may decide to do
their site on a fictitious organization that does smoking research!
(Hint: read through all of these items carefully
before beginning):
<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- begin comment to hide JavaScript
document.write(“Last
updated: ”)
var modified
modified = document.lastModified
document.write(modified)
// end
comment to hide JavaScript. -->
</script>
You do not need to know what the tags and code mean at this time. What this code will do is display the date
your HTML file was last modified on the web page for us. You will learn HOW this works in the next
section of the course.
1. Using the
Photoshop skills you learn in lab, modify the image(s) as described in Part 1A. Don’t be afraid to try other features of
Photoshop, etc. while you are at it!
2. Make a copy
of the part 1A web page to modify. Do
NOT modify the original file. The copied
file should be renamed something like part1b.html and placed in your info1b
directory along with copies of images used.
In your web site, you may create additional files as needed. They should all be within the info1b directory. Do not create any files with names that
begin with “index”, such as index.html, index.htm, etc.
You may also want to add additional links, etc. Remember what you learned
about evaluating a Web sites and work on “improving” some of those features in
your Web site. For example, consider how
you can use fonts, colors, spelling and grammar, presentation, textual content,
and vocabulary to further enhance the “credibility” of your image.
4.
Using the more advanced HTML skills you developed in
later HTML labs, continue to refine your Web site of Misinformation as follows:
a.
Add
a mailto link to your email address.
b.
Use styles in at least a couple of places. It’s OK to also use the older ways of
formatting text, but styles are the future of HTML, so show us you know how to
use them.
c.
Use tables to format your page in a professional
manner.
5.
Create a separate Web page in which you reflect on
the problem of misinformation. Keep this in the same directory (info1b), and
call it disclaimer.html.
a.
On this “disclaimer” page, provide a disclaimer for
the quality of information on your Misinformation Web site. In other words, let the audience know that
the information is bogus and done for a class project.
b.
Provide a discussion of the ethical issues concerned
with conveying the accuracy, completeness and validity of the information you
are presenting. What are the issues
surrounding the publication of so much “information” by so many people on so
many different topics? What are the
responsibilities of those who publish information and those who seek
information on the Internet? This discussion
probably needs at least two significant paragraphs to be sufficient.
c.
Include
a link from this page (the disclaimer page) back to your Web site of
misinformation.
d.
Add
the following piece of code to the very bottom of your HTML page. Place is immediately ABOVE the </BODY>
and </HTML> tags in your source code:
<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- begin comment to hide JavaScript
document.write(“Last updated: ”)
var modified
modified = document.lastModified
document.write(modified)
// end
comment to hide JavaScript. -->
</script>
You do not need to know
what the tags and code mean at this time.
What this code will do is display the date your HTML file was last
modified on the web page for us. You
will learn HOW this works in the next section of the course.
6. How
effective is your Web site of misinformation?
Find out by trying it out on some unsuspecting visitor! This is a form of experimentation, a typical
tool in many disciplines.
a. Create
a copy of your part 1b Web Misinformation file.
Keep the page in the info1b directory, and call the new file something
like main.html. On this copy, remove the
misinformation title and anything else that gives hints that the page is
bogus. Link this test page to your
disclaimer page.
b.
Show
this version of your Web site to two individuals; ideally, people who do not
know you’ve been working on this project.
After they have looked at it for a while, have each visitor rate your
Web site according to the evaluation criteria table you used in Assignment 2 –
source, currency, verifiability, and so forth.
Create a table of the user
evaluations of your site.
c.
Summarize the results. Include the table and your summary on your
disclaimer page. The summary should be
at least one paragraph.
d.
Write a final paragraph on your disclaimer page
discussing how effective your Web site was at establishing the credibility of
misinformation. How you could have improved the credibility of your site,
especially if you had more advanced knowledge of HTML or programming?