"Fear and Loathing in Homer"

The podcast “Fear and Loathing in Homer and Rockville” centers around the controversial topic of immigration. What’s strange about this podcast is that it is whether or not immigration should be welcomed in Homer, Alaska; a town with absolutely no documented immigrants.

Having little knowledge on the subject, Ben Tryer, decides to do research of his own on the subject to be more informed before becoming for or against immigration. He conducted his research through interviews with the towns people, including the chief of police, and through online searches. Ben begins to struggle with trusting his sources online because he doesn’t know how reliable they can be. With a topic as controversial as immigration, there are a lot of bias resources making this difficult.

The steps I take to making sure sources are reliable when online is by looking at who is putting out the information. I find sites like Wikapedia to be unreliable but sites ending in .gov to be reliable because the information is coming straight from the government rather than anyone with a computer.

When it comes to controversial topics, it can be extremely hard for people to be unbiased during discussions. This is because everyone has an opinion on topics, even ones they don’t have much knowledge on.

I have now found a community and research question for my paper. My community is student athletes and how being an athlete affects their education. I wanted to research this community because I was apart of it in high school and I am curious to how college students are affected in the community.