Evaluation of General Sources

Back in early October of 2014, Satya Nadella, the CEO of arguably the biggest computer company Microsoft made controversial comments regarding women and whether or not they should ask for a raise in the IT-industry. When asked if women should as for a raise, Nadella said “It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,”.  I will be evaluating two articles on this topic, exploring the following: URL, Author, Last Updated, Purpose, Graphics, Position on Subject, and Links. 

Tecnomovida Caracas "Satya Nadella"  July 16th, 2014 via Flickr

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

The first article on this controversy comes from The Guardian. The Guardian's domain is a ".com" which is short for commercial. This is the most common domain and typically the most preferred among websites because it serves as a business presence on the internet. It also tells you that the article is an article from on online newspaper and is not used for the government or education. For this article there was no specified author which makes the report less credible. It does not give the reader the insight of what position the author of the article may hold. 

The article was last updated on October 9th of 2014, since this was when the event occurred one may infer that it has not been updated since it has been published. The purpose of this article was to inform the reader of the events that occurred that formed this controversy. It tells the reader what Nadella has said that upset so many people. It also is trying to show how Nadella recognized his mistake and issued a public apology for it. The only graphic on the page is an image of Nadella. The purpose of the photo is to give the readers a visual understanding of the subject of the article. 

The position that The Guardian takes on this article is in favor of the female employees and against Nadella. This is demonstrated towards the end of the article where they display the percentage of females working for Microsoft. Another way The Guardian shows their position is emphasizing on how Nadella issued an apology. By emphasizing on this they are showing their support for the female employees. This is the correct position for The Guardian to take because if they did not it would seem as if they are supporting gender inequality.

There are only three links in the article, the first simply leads to a page made by The Guardian that has other links related to Microsoft. The second link takes the readers to another article that is about Nadella's public apology and his apology to the workers within Microsoft. The third link leads to The Guardian's homepage of computing news. The links are more or less advertisement for The Guardian because they lead to more pages on The Guardian's website. 

Mike Mozart  "Microsoft"  December 20th, 2014 via Flickr

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

The second article is from Geek Wire and takes a slightly different approach than The Guardian. It starts off the same way, outlining the events that took place. Following that, there are questions and answers from women who work in the computer science field.  Geek Wire also has a ".com" domain meaning that it is "commercial" and that this article could be bias and in favor of the publisher. 

The author of this article is Taylor Soper, he seems to have good credentials as he was named "New Journalist of the Year" by the Society of Professional Journalists. He writes on multiple topics, spreading from sports to technology. 

The webpage was last updated on October 13th, 2014. Similarly to The Guardian's article the article has most likely not been updated since the article was published. The article is not necessarily out of date because it was giving the latest news. Now, in 2015 the news is not breaking and the topic has been resolved since the article was written. 

The purpose of this article is to explain the event and tell the readers what happened and why/how it happened. The other purpose of this article was to explore how women in the field of computer science felt about the comments Nadella made. It is solely to explore the ideas and reactions that occurred due to the comments made by Nadella. 

The very first graphic in the article is Nadella. This is done to show the reader what the subject of the controversy looks like. In the Q&A section in which the interview female employees of the computer science field there are images of the women they are interviewing. This is done to make the controversy more personal, appealing to the emotions of the readers.

The position that Geek Wire takes on the subject is clear. They are not in favor of the comments that Nadella made. This is evident by the approach they took on the article. They appealed to the emotions of the readers by conveying how women in the computer science field felt about the comments Nadella made. They wanted the readers to feel sympathetic for the women which is a clear signal of what position they took on the position. This was a very smart approach taken by the author, taking the side of the popular position and giving them a voice. 

There are many more links for this article than The Guardian's article. The links lead the reader to other articles regarding this topic, such as how he retracted his comments. Another link leads to an article explaining his comments he said about women. The links lead to articles on Geek Wire, allowing them to essentially promote themselves. This takes away some of their credibility but since their articles are informative it is still credible.