Conspiracy project with English 7

Your assignment is to do research on a conspiracy theory that has a following in the US or another part of the English speaking world. You are to search for information from different perspectives, and apply source criticism to what you find. 

From the grading criteria for grade E:

"Eleven kan med viss säkerhet använda strategier för att söka relevant information, strukturera den och värdera olika källors tillförlitlighet."

It's the strategy-part that we will focus on here. You probably use strategies that you are not aware of all the time. Now is the time to become aware! We will practice search strategies by not just searching for information, but searching in a structured way and practice the routine of critically evaluating while searching. For this you will use a search log.

Using the search log

The search log is there to help you do structured searches, for example by documenting the search words you use and by looking up the sources that a source refers to. The search log will help you become aware of your own search process, you will be able to go back to what you've found and remember the content of each source.

It will also help you move forward in you research. By filling in so called "trampolines" you find new words to do new and more narrow searches with. Remeber that you have to try different search words and combinations wherever you are searching - only then can you claim to have a strategy for finding relevant information in a structured way.

Another important aspect of the search log is documenting your critical evaluation of each source. In the far right column you will write about the credibility of each source. Here you should think about things like:

• Who has written the text? Are they experts? Where have they gotten their information from?
• What does the source say? Does it include different perspectives or is it one-sided? Can you confirm the content from other sources?
• Why was this written? Are there financial, political or other interests at stake?
• Sometimes it's relevant to look at a timeline - when was it written? Has something important come to light since the publication of this text? 

How to start

The first step is to choose your topic. In the assignment description you'll find a list of different conspiracy theories to choose from, but you may also have ideas of your own or want to explore other conspiracy theories. A simple google search or browsing through a library book on conspiracy theories in general may help.

1. Once you have your topic - start mapping your knowledge on the subject: Write down everything you can think of about the conspiracy theory in a mindmap or a google document.

Why is this step important? Because the knowledge you already have is like hooks for all the new information you are going to find - you need to hang your new knowledge on your old one. This is also a great way of figuring out what different search words you can use.
2. Fill up your knowledge map by doing basic searches - and reading what you find. A good place for this is encyclopedias of different kinds, for example Britannica online and Wikipedia, or using a search engine like Google. Try finding just basic information for a start.

Remember that googling is not the same as searching the internet, and it's extra important to do many different searches. Make sure to use more than one source and to search in different places - otherwise you will risk using only a certain kind of source (and the criteria for English 7 is using different kinds of sources). 

3. Further searching - when you've done some basic reading about your conspiracy theory you need to go deeper and find sources that analyse and question the topic. You will need both an inside perspective (from those who believe in the conspiracy theory) and an outside perspective (from those who are critical). Again, you need several different sources for each argument or claim.

Places for further searching:

Library catalogue - for finding books.
Artikelsök - for finding articles in newspapers and magazines that are not searchable in Google
AV-Media media catalogue - great for finding documentaries etc.

There might also be student essays or other scientific publications from universities: you can search in for example DiVA, Google Scholar or Ebsco.