Web Analysis - How to unpack a website

Standard Academic Assessment Rules Apply!

Websites are no different from other academic sources when it comes to scrutiny.

Always evaluate a source you're interested in using for these criteria:

• Who is the audience?
• Who wrote it?
• Does it include specific citations?
• What is the purpose of this source?
• Does it add something to my understanding of the topic? 

The first step in unpacking a website is determining what kind of website you're looking at. 

Common types of sites include:

• news 
• company or corporate 
• advocacy/policy
• industry/trade/professional
• education
• government
• non-government organization (NGO)/charity
• personal interest/hobby/community
• shopping
• entertainment/arts

Some of these categories are overlapping. For example, an entertainment site might be owned by a company or corporation. A special interest group may have started a charity or a non-government organization.

Ultimately, what is the purpose of the site's owner and the site itself? 

The internet is a place jam-packed with digital stuff. Not everything on the web is a "website". 

We usually use "website" to mean a group of pages linked by design and navigation, owned and created by one entity.

Within websites, various documents might be included.

• news stories
• advertisements
• knowledge base
• blog
• media
• about (self-description), information about the entity
• research or published works
• store/sales

When you do a search, you might be accessing a document within a larger site. It's important to recognize:

• What is the document I'm looking at?
• Who posted it online? Is it within a larger website?
• How does it fit within the larger website?

You will need to know this information to be able to properly cite any web source.