We should decriminalize marijuana and tax it.
SAYS WHO?
Cocaine is a menace and we need to go to war against those who traffic in it.
SAYS WHO?
The War on Drugs is a losing war and all it's done is feed the prison-industrial complex.
SAYS WHO?
Authority in the context of information literacy is why we should believe or credit a source of information. In its "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education," the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) define a set of concepts that college students should understand about information in order to be information literate. The first of these concepts (or "frames") is "Authority is Constructed and Contextual":
Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility, and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used. Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. It is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required.
Consider the Following Sources
TEAM ONE
Article title: "Democratic Security and Defence Policy"
Author Name:PRESIDENCY OF THE REPUBLIC [of Colombia, President Álvaro Uribe Vélez] - MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
Who Published It: The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Colombia, 2003
Sample Quote:
❝The antithesis of democratic politics is terrorism. The terrorist uses violence to impose his will on others, at the expense of the lives of thousands of civilians. That is what we witnessed in the attacks on the El Nogal Club in Bogotá and in the city of Neiva. We witnessed it, too, in Fortul, Arauca, where terrorists tricked a child with a bicycle bomb which they later activated, putting an end to his life. There can only be one response to terrorism: its defeat. Those who continue to engage in such criminal conduct will feel all the weight of the law.
Q1: Who is the author? What are their credentials/expertise? (Hint: Try Googling them.)
Q2: Who published this? Are they a popular or a scholarly source? How do you know?
Q3: What's an argument or claim you could prove with this source? Follow-up: Why should the rest of us be persuaded?
Q4: Why might this source be unpersuasive?
TEAM TWO
Article title: "Las revelaciones de la JEP sobre el horror de los ‘falsos positivos’" = The revelations of the JEP [Special Jurisdiction for Peace] about the horror of the "false positives"
Author Name: Redacción Justicia [unsigned]
Who Published It: El Tiempo (Bogota, Colombia), July 11, 2021 - Proxy access through Access World News.
Sample Quote:
❝The decision is unprecedented. For the first time, the Colombian justice system pointed out that the 'false positives' were the result of "an institutional policy that established the body of the enemy fallen in combat as the main indicator of the success of the military effort," which led some soldiers and military units to murder innocent civilians to present them as 'legitimate' casualties in combat.
Q1: Who is the author? What are their credentials/expertise? (Hint: Try Googling them.)
Q2: Who published this? Are they a popular or a scholarly source? How do you know?
Q3: What's an argument or claim you could prove with this source? Follow-up: Why should the rest of us be persuaded?
Q4: Why might this source be unpersuasive?
TEAM THREE
Article title: "Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines"
Author Name: Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr.
Who Published It: Journal of Global Security Studies, 6(2), 2021
Sample Quote:
❝In the Colombia case, the Uribe administration instrumentalized the notion of peace as the supposed end goal of intensified state violence and the resulting human rights crisis. The Colombian government also used politically resonant concepts such as “democratic security” in selling a militaristic war on drugs as a panacea for the illegal drug problem.
Q1: Who is the author? What are their credentials/expertise? (Hint: Try Googling them.)
Q2: Who published this? Are they a popular or a scholarly source? How do you know?
Q3: What's an argument or claim you could prove with this source? Follow-up: Why should the rest of us be persuaded?
Q4: Why might this source be unpersuasive?
TEAM FOUR
Article title: "Police Are Repeating the Drug War's Dark History in the Fentanyl Era"
Author Name: Zachary Siegel
Who Published It: The New Republic, September 20, 2022
Sample Quote:
❝With more than 70,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths per year—and an overdose crisis that is contributing to a historic decline in life expectancy in the U.S.—politicians and law enforcement are reverting to a long discredited drug war tactic: displaying drug seizures to the public and making highly exaggerated claims about what the busts mean to the illicit drug supply and public health.
Q1: Who is the author? What are their credentials/expertise? (Hint: Try Googling them.)
Q2: Who published this? Are they a popular or a scholarly source? How do you know?
Q3: What's an argument or claim you could prove with this source? Follow-up: Why should the rest of us be persuaded?
Q4: Why might this source be unpersuasive?
Some types of sources accessible through our databases:
Government Documents -> Good as evidence of what a government's policy is, as well as for the economic and demographic statistics that government agencies collect. (Our library has a Government Documents section on the first floor, by the way. But we can also help you find and access documents from other sources.)
Newspapers -> Good for immediate reporting on what just happened.
In academic writing, newspapers are considered a popular source; where possible, you should try to add context/analysis to them by incorporating (and entering into conversation with) scholarly sources.
Two very useful newspaper databases are Access World News and ProQuest U.S. Newsstream, for international and U.S. newspapers, respectively. You can also search for a specific newspaper (e.g. El Tiempo, La Universal, The New York Times) in the Gustavus Library Catalog, and you will be able to search their web archive through one of these databases. There are thousands of newspapers available in full-text through these databases.
Magazines -> Have a similar level of authority as newspapers, but sometimes engage in more "long-form" journalism or deal with more specialized topics. They may be used as primary source evidence of what some areas of "pop culture" thinks or has to say about a topic.
Like newspapers, in academic writing magazines are considered a popular source; you should try to add context/analysis to them by incorporating (and entering into conversation with) scholarly sources.
These may be found in many of the same databases where you find newspapers.
***Scholarly Sources*** -> This is the kind of source that's most likely to be new to you, and the kind you will be dealing with a lot in your college classes.
Two of the best general databases for scholarly articles in the humanities and social sciences are JSTOR and Academic Search Complete.
Reminder that scholarly sources:
