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Faiza Hasan

Professor Martin

English 1102

March 21, 2018

Digging Deeper Into Sources

The Internet has helped people in many ways, the most important way, however, is that it

has allowed its users to obtain information from anywhere around the world with just a click of a

button. With all this information at the user’s fingertips, it is very easy to find exactly what one is

looking for; this has been especially helpful to students who are trying to obtain information for

certain assignments or projects. Nowadays, when finding sources for a research paper or class

project, students just type keywords into Google, and select the first thing that pops up. This is

very concerning because there are so many sources that are biased, inaccurate, or opinion-based

instead of fact-based; thus sources lack credibility and reliable information. Many people believe

that whatever the internet says is true, because they do not know what to look for when it comes

to identifying whether a source is credible or not. Finding out if sources are credible can be a

difficult task if one does not know what to look for, this is why two sources will be compared in

this essay to help understand what to pay close attention to. The first source is “How DACA

Affects the Health of America's Children” (which will be known as​ Source A​); the second

source is the book, “​U.S. Latino Issues​” (which will be known as​ Source B​). Out of the two

sources, Source B is more credible than Source A, because it has more sources within it as well

as a reliable publisher and author.

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Source A is about how children of immigrant families are struggling mentally due to the

high amounts of stress regarding the repeal of DACA. The children are more inclined to being

depressed or anxious because they do not know whether or not their families will stay in tact.

The first thing that draws attention to Source A is that there is no individual writer’s name for the

article. Instead, Stanford University is written on the byline; this allows for some credibility

because Stanford is such a prestigious school, it is ranked one of the best colleges in America.

The part that is concerning here is that there is not much credibility for the young writers who

produce works for the Stanford News; there also is not much credibility for other publishers who

are using Stanford’s name. This is because they are students who have little to no writing

experience for major publications. Source A is also not credible due to the fact that the individual

who wrote the article cannot be pinpointed; meaning there is no information on the author. One

cannot research about the author if they do not know who they are; they will not be able to find

out what type of biases they might have, given a certain topic. Alongside the credibility issue, the

article is published by Phys.org. This is a web-based science, research, and technology news

service. It is claimed that this publication focuses more on fact-based and unbiased information.

In this case, however, the article does not provide proper sources about where they received their

facts from. They do not have a separate references page; and although they have sources, it is not

nearly as many as Source B provided. They also use professors and information from their own

Stanford Immigration Policy Lab instead of other sources like prominent figures in politics. This

can create biases in the information provided in the article.

Source B discusses immigration from Mexico caused by the Treaty of Guadalupe

Hidalgo; it also talks about Obama’s DACA program which allowed for the children of
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undocumented immigrants to lose the fear they had of being deported. As opposed to Source A,

there was an author listed for Source B; that definitely helps with the credibility of the work. The

author of this book is Rodolfo F. Acuña; he is an activist and scholar who has a doctorate in

Latin American Studies. He has written 20 titles, 32 academic articles and chapters in books, 155

book reviews, and 188 opinion pieces (Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña).Acuña received a number of

awards and recognitions such as National Hispanic Institute, Lifetime Achievement Award,

Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), Historian of the Lions Award, and the

Distinguished Scholar Award, as well as many others (Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña). Aside from the

author’s reliability, there is also credibility coming from the publisher as well. ABC-CLIO

Greenwood is a source that publishes scholarly works that allow for students and educators alike

to rely on their books, as they provide expansive insight on research topics. Alongside the

publisher, the author also has a section for references that he used; there are about 4 to 5 pages

just dedicated to the references. Some of the references the author used were mainstream news

outlets such as USA Today, and Chicago Sun Times as well as Pew Research Center and the

U.S. Census Bureau. This definitely helps with Source B’s credibility because it shows that they

are using reliable information in their article. They also used direct quotations from the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo to support their argument.

So there was much evidence found to prove that Source B is more credible and reliable

that Source A. One example of this is when Source A states, “​An interdisciplinary team

including members from Stanford University, Oregon Health and Science University, the

Stanford School of Medicine, and Northwestern University designed a novel strategy to identify

the intergenerational health effects of DACA” (Stanford University). This statement​ which was
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written by Stanford University, uses itself along with other universities to show what their

research resulted in. This can be considered not as credible as source B because Stanford

University is 2 out of the 4 universities that conducted the research. This means that they did not

use much outside information to help support their argument; there is always room for potential

bias here. Another example showing the credibility of Source B is when it states, “The present

owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract,

shall enjoy with respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the

United States.” (Immigration and Losing Fear: DACA-DAPA). This shows that the author is

using reliable sources such as treaties or acts; this increases credibility because these are facts

coming from sources that are trustworthy and widely known.

So in conclusion, Source B is more reliable than Source A because it uses more outside

information from credible sources. Using mainstream news articles really helped because the

audience can always find the articles used, and can understand whether or not there is bias in the

work based on the news outlet. Source B also helped itself with credibility by using a trusted

publisher; ABC-CLIO Greenwood is a reliable source for students to find scholarly and

fact-based works. So Source B is indeed the more reliable and credible source compared to

Source A.
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Works Cited

Acuña, Rodolfo F. "Immigration and Losing Fear: DACA-DAPA." ​U.S. Latino Issues​, 2nd ed.,

Greenwood, 2017, pp. 195-222. ​Gale Virtual Reference Library​,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX7362700017/GVRL?u=cod_lrc&sid=GVRL&xid

=97f697f7. Accessed 2 Apr. 2018.

"Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña." ​California State University, Northridge​. CSUN, 25 Mar. 2014. Web. 03

Apr. 2018.

"How DACA Affects the Health of America's Children." ​Phys.org - News and Articles on

Science and Technology​. Phys.org, 31 Aug. 2017. Web. 21 Mar. 2018.