Jamal is in prewriting.
The steps of the writing process are : prewriting, research, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading.
The writing stage before research is called <em>prewriting.</em> It is a think and decide stage. The main goal of this stage is to find ideas about the subject you want to write about. Some of the strategies used to generate ideas are: brainstorming, clustering, free writing and looping.
Jamal is trying to develop a great deal of information about the subject quickly. He is trying to find information on the internet that would be relevant to his writing. He is also assessing the information there, in order to see if it would be useful to him.