Rebuttal of “Teen's life and death unfolds on Twitter”

University of Phoenix

This is written in rebuttal of Jaime Butow’s article in the Bakersfield Californian on October 29, 2012. The article is about the social media postings of Breana Webb and her friends over the weekend leading to her death at the hands of a drunk driver early on Monday morning. This article will analyze the reliability, credibility, and validity of the data used by Ms. Butow. It will also illustrate the logical fallacies in Ms. Butow’s argument.
First we will analyze the author’s reliability and validity of data. In this instance they can be judged together. The data used and quoted by Ms. Butow is taken directly from Ms. Webb’s Twitter account and other social media pages. Also, Ms. Butow’s data comes from Ms. Webb’s Twitter account “followers”, or people who follow her posts. These followers are typically friends with the account holder. Ms. Butow’s reliability of data is impeccable with some points because it was written by Ms. Webb. However, posts made on Twitter by other people began to lose absolute reliability because it begins to become here say. The validity of the data holds true for all the same reasons as its reliability (Butow, 2012).
Next we will analyze Ms. Butow’s credibility. This becomes a difficulty situation as her story was not written directly about the DUI and its resulting accident, but rather the online legacy that a person leaves behind. The first point to assess Ms. Butow’s credibility is her motivation. Ms. Butow works for the a newspaper and it is in business to make money. Controversy is one of the tactics used by newspaper agencies to incite interest and raise sales (jcalles1, 2012). Ms. Butow does attempt to assuage the readers of her motivation by commenting “I held my breath and thought of my own 8-year-old”. She is attempting to