Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Context of sources

The context matters, remember? And I promised you we would zoom into that. So here we are zooming into that. The source needs to directly address the topic, not just mention it casually. What do I mean? For example, we might take a book, a scholarly book on African art, and that may be a good, reliable source on African art. But it could mention, in a comment, the population size of Nigeria. And it could be wrong about that. Or it could just be outdated because the book is from 30 years ago. Everything it says about African art is still good, but the population size of Nigeria is not what this book is about, it is not a relevant source for that piece of information. Do you see? I said that the source has to be relevant for the statement that we are trying to establish, not just in general. And so, in this case, if we want to establish the population size of Nigeria, we would want a relevant source, for example, the national census, right? That would be a good source for the population size of Nigeria. We wouldn't want to establish Wikipedia's Voice about the population size of Nigeria from a book about art. It's just not a relevant source, even though it is reliable in the context of African art.

So again, I'm trying to shake you out of the idea that a source by itself is either reliable or not. I mean, some sources are just unreliable, period. But a reliable source still needs to be relevant in the context. It might be reliable for some things and not reliable for other things. And it is our responsibility to tell those things apart.