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Back Bias

Everyone has a bias or viewpoint and, as such, each article, source, or even a primary text will have a different slant. There are always different angles and perspectives on articles, but it’s incredibly important to know what the bias of your resources are and also which side of the issue you are representing. When you are writing a paper one of the first rules is that you need to support your argument. There are many ways to support your argument, but what people don’t really think about that often is that the bias of your sources is important. You want to make sure that when you are choosing your resources you get a healthy dose of both sides of the issue you are writing about because you want to use as much information as you can to support your facts. What can make an amazing paper even better is to take your issue and not only support it with resources that support your side of the argument, but also to take the opposing sides arguments and debunk them so that the reader can tell that you are well informed on the topic and why you’ve chosen this angle to approach it from.

Depending on the argument that you take (animal cruelty, abuse, etc) it can be hard to look at certain articles from the opposing side, let alone use them. However, it’s important to make the effort because it can not only give you a new understanding of the argument, but it can also strengthen yours. If you are too invested in a topic it might be better to pick something that you are less passionate about, even though you really want to inform others about the topic, because it can be hard to be objective and not make it personal.

Here’s a video by the University of Texas at Austen about bias: 

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