Consideration of Audience and Bias

"The sudden swarm of earthquakes in Arkansas -- including the largest quake to hit the state in 35 years..." and a half dozen excerpts from selected individuals including political officials, university professors, and oil/natural gas company representatives set the tone for the information passed on in the article.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/01/fracking-earthquakes-arkansas-man-experts-warn/#ixzz1PHPkSbOL

The tone set by Liu and Kaplan (2011) immediately warns of impending doom and chaos. While the reporters attempt to choose a variety of sources, the reader is left wondering what bias each individual brings to the report. Also each individual is only quoted for a few lines of selected text. A student researching "earthquakes in Arkansas" may become somewhat confused by this limited text.

Consideration of source selection in research of geologic events is vital to the study and analysis data for research...