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Field Guide to Research

For this assignment, I decided to fact check a story on a ground-breaking story for video game fans of all ages. Using the free version of BuzzSumo, I typed "Nintendo" into the search bar, as it is my family's favorite video game company. To my surprise, the top result was a story published to a newsletter named Variety, titled "Charles Martinet Retires From Voicing Mario: ‘You Are All Numba One in My Heart’".

To make a bittersweet story short, this newsletter explains Nintendo's famous video game character, Mario, is facing new beginnings, as his voice actor, Charles Martinet is retiring from voice acting. This news can be shocking to video game users of all ages, so I decided to research further past Variety and fact check their claims.

Upon Google searching "Charles Martinet retirement," hundreds of articles and videos are presented, most of which who are portraying the same statement, such as CNN, USA Today, and Syfy. Instead of clicking another article that is relaying the same words as Variety's, I decided to check Nintendo's official social media pages for the source of this announcement. Variety's article was originally published on August 21st, 2023, so I headed over to @NintendoAmerica on X (Twitter) to see if they revealed the big news around that time period. Sure enough, there is a 3-minute long video announcement featuring Charles Martinet himself, uploaded in a Tweet titled "Here’s a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles Martinet regarding the change of Mario’s voice actor, announced on 8/21".

To everyone's relief, Charles Martinet is confirmed to retire from voice acting, but will now act as Mario's ambassador as he attends meet and greets and Nintendo events across the world, so he will still be an active member of the Nintendo family. Using BuzzSumo, I was presented with a story that I wasn't sure I could believe, but was able to locate the source and confirm Variety's claims.

[olivewithablog]

Reading Laterally

For this week's assignment, I decided to search X (Twitter) for a user who posts frequently, but does not have a large following. Upon scrolling through my feed, I was presented with a Tweet that seemed to be in the beginning stages of gaining traction. This Tweet states "People are swimming in the subway in New York City. just think of all the trash and rodent feces and diseases. NYC MTA is in a state of emergency due to heavy rain and flooding" and was posted by user @BSV_NYC (Bitcoin New York City), who currently has 125 followers. The video showcases people attempting to navigate NYC's subways in what looks to be 3-4 feet of dirty rainwater.

Prior to my knowledge of NYC's current weather dilemma, I was not only concerned for their citizens, but wondering if this video was actually filmed recently, as it could just be clickbait for this account to gain more attention. After all, in my experience, I always find that crypto-related accounts will do anything to get a user's attention. As it turns out, @BSV_NYC is an account based in NYC that claims to bring awareness of Bitcoin to the city, which tells me that if anyone is going to know the current weather, it would be them.

I continued to search the account's posts, where I found several other NYC flood videos from the same day. The user also Retweeted different angles of flood videos from other accounts with large followings. After a few seconds of scrolling, I made it to the account's posts prior to when NYC's flooding began. The user holds meetups in NYC for Bitcoin awareness and even speaks in press conferences across the East coast! Overall, I was able to dig deeper into an account that at first glance, seemed a little suspicious in my eyes, but discovered that they are a genuine user spreading news that is true, right from the source.

[olivewithablog]

Going Upstream with Doge

For this week's assignment, I decided to research one of my favorite memes on the Internet: Doge! As most people know, the Doge meme has evolved into quite the trend, especially after the Crypto currency "Dogecoin" hit its peak in 2021. Being a dog lover, I've just always been fond of the funny-looking Shiba Inu's face and occasionally wondered where the picture originated from.

I began my investigating by simply Google searching "Doge". As expected, many different versions of the meme appeared, but I chose to click on one of the very first options, which was the original, unedited image. This image was posted to a news outlet named CNET, who published an article called "The Shiba Inu dog behind the doge meme turns 16".

After reading CNET's article, I learned that Doge's real name is Kabosu! She is currently 17 years old and lives in Japan with her owners, who run an Instagram page called @kabosumama. By using this information, I researched further into the social media pages of Kabosu, in hopes of finding the original post. Eventually, I ended up on Wikipedia's page for Doge, which stated that Kabosu's owners also run a blog, which is where the original, unedited picture was first published.

Upon scrolling through owner, Atsuko Sato's online blog, you can view hundreds of adorable photos of Kabosu and her cat! What I found super interesting is that Atsuko obviously understands how much the Internet loves her dog, so she created a "History" tab on this blog, where you can view a timeline of photos posted all the way back to 2010. Atsuko's only current upload of the original "Doge" image was last posted on January 4th, 2014, which is 4 years after the picture went viral. It is uncertain as to what happened to the very initial post, which allowed the sharing of Kabosu to go viral on Reddit. On her 01/04/2014 blog post, Atsuko stated "This photo of Kabosu was used as a meme. The meme is apparently called "Doge"". Throughout this blog, thousands of images can be seen that prove Atsuko of being the rightful owner of Kabosu and has frequently expressed her attention towards the viral meme through captions and photographs. Below are two of my favorite pictures that I screenshotted from Kabosu's official Instagram page!

Atsuko Sato's Blog: https://kabochan.blog.jp/archives/9749389.html

Kabosu's Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/kabosumama/

[olivewithablog]

Assignment #1: Fact-Checking Journey

For this week's assignment, I chose to dig deeper into an article that I stumbled across while scrolling through X (Twitter). Being located in New Jersey, it's common for my feed to include news articles from surrounding states, such as in this case, Pennsylvania. I was intrigued by a headline stating "Danelo Cavalcante prison escape: Murder convict spotted in Pennsylvania town as search enters eighth day". It's not every day that you see a murder convict escaping prison, especially this close to home!

As most people who felt some form of concern would, I clicked the article which opened up Safari on my phone, to read the full report. To my surprise, I was presented with a news outlet that I've never seen of or heard of before: The Independent. I'm not saying that I didn't trust this company, but assuming that they aren't as well-known as others, such as 6ABC or New York Times, I decided to head over to DuckDuckGo for some further investigation.

After inserting the murder convict in question's name, Danelo Cavalcante into DuckDuckGo, I was instantly presented with several other news outlets sharing the same report! CBS Philadelphia, MPR, CBS News, and CNN provided the same news story as The Independent. Sure enough, this 34-year old man escaped from Chester County Prison just a few days after being given a life sentence without parole, due to stabbing his ex-girlfriend in front of her two young children. He has been on the run for eight days now, but there's a chance that he was sighted near Longwood Gardens, PA.

Upon using DuckDuckGo as a research tool, I was able to confirm that The Independent, which is a US, Asia, and Spanish news outlet, is a reputable source for this type of news.