Source Evaluation Example

Source Evaluations This source, “Parental Mediation, Online Activites, and Cyberbullying,” comes from SIRS. Author, Dr. Gustavo S. Mesch, has a Ph. D in sociology. Dr. Mesch did a study on cyber bullying. This study was part of CyberPsychology & Behavior Volume 12, November 4, 2009. Mesch automatically establishes himself as a trustworthy source by writing Ph. D. after his name. In his references he uses other studies from journals and periodicals. Mesch goes on to talk about what cyber bullying is and how it takes place. He implies that when children and adolescents use the computer for their own use, it opens up the doors that expose them to being bullied. Often cyber bullying occurs on networking sites that give information such as residence, age, and other personal information. What makes things worse is when a child posts his or her picture, making themselves known to millions of others on the website. He believes that parental mediation is useful when dealing with cyber bullying. If parents monitor their children while on the computer, it can lower the risk of them being bullied as well as being the bully. In this study he measures the amount of parental mediation in the home. He used three variables in order to measure restrictive mediation. He asked parents whether they had a filter to keep their child from going to certain websites, whether they had installed monitoring systems in order to watch their children while they are on the computer, and did they ever go behind their child to check what sites they had been on. He also went on to ask about where the computer was located in the house and whether the parents had any rules concerning the computer. This article helps my belief that parents need to mediate what children do while they are on the computer. His study helps support my argument that it is the parents job to watch what their child does, and monitor their actions. It helps to see how the odds of cyber bullying can go down if