Shifting Trends in Evaluating the Credibility of CMC

Given the rapid development and dissemination of various information types within CMC, source evaluation methodology is increasingly difficult and has been complicated further by dominant academic approaches. We trace the reification of book-based evaluation criteria and how its exalted status has been undergirded by a mentality that reinscribes old patterns of credibility onto wholly new entities such as the World Wide Web. Additionally, we trace the development and implementation of these book-based criteria from an influential article to their various incarnations in the MLA handbook, an examination that reveals how CMC has been ignored, then sequestered, and ultimately embraced, albeit lukewarmly. Finally, we will recommend using a rhetorical approach to source evaluation, which can be easily applied to assignments in the composition classroom.