By Amy Hofmockel, Creative Technology Librarian
We are living in a time with a never-ending stream of information and media that seeks our time and attention. How can you know what is true, what is false, and what is simply taken out of context?
It is up to you to fact-check the information you consume, which means taking time to go beyond just accepting the first article you come across.
How to determine fact vs. fiction
To help be sure that the media you view and consume is based in fact, not fiction, you can:
- Check the trustworthiness of the source,
- Cross-reference the information with other separate sources, and
- Follow the information back to its original context.
In this post, I’ll take us through a method to evaluate information that was designed by research scientist Mike Caulfield. It’s called SIFT, or the Four Moves.
SIFT: The Four Moves
1. Stop
Before you read an article or use a website, STOP and ask yourself two questions first:
- Do you know this website or information source?
- What reputation does the website or article have?
If you cannot answer these two questions confidently, use the following moves first to gain the context of the information you are consuming.
Don’t read or share media until you know how trustworthy it is.
2. Investigate the source
You don’t have to do hours of research on every piece of media you consume, but even a quick minute of checking who and what is promoting the information will help you become a more informed consumer.
For example, if you are watching a video about the nutritional value of cereal that is sponsored by “Acme Cereal Company,” knowing that fact beforehand will help you have context for what the video shows you.
Here are two ways to INVESTIGATE your sources:
- Use a simple search engine to find out more about the website or news article you are about to look at. You can open a new browser tab and do a search for the company or organization (e.g. “Acme Cereal Company”) promoting the article. You’ll get multiple search results you can look at to get an idea of who is publishing the information.
- Use Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is a good starting point to investigate journal sources and organizations because the sources used are cited at the bottom of every Wikipedia article.
3. Find better coverage
If you find some media that makes a claim that you are interested in, and the specific media source is not as important to you as knowing whether the claim is true or false, you will want to FIND better coverage.
To do this, you may want to ignore the first piece of media that caught your attention and go looking for more examples from other sources that confirm the same information.
Rather than spending your time verifying the first source you came across, you may want to look for the best source for the information instead.
You do not have to agree with the information, of course, but having a clear idea of where a claim is coming from and what context it is being given by multiple sources will help you know how to evaluate it.
4. Trace claims, quotes & media to the original context
Reposts, shares, and embedded links to articles are common these days. These types of media are aimed at getting as many eyeballs on their content as possible, without regard to the accuracy or context of what is being posted.
For example, you may see a video of a fight breaking out without any footage of the lead-up to the event. Computer-generated images and videos are easy for anyone to create, and they can look extremely convincing, so how can you know if it’s a real recording or something someone put into a generative algorithm to get clicks?
You’ll have to TRACE the information back to the source and get the original context so you can be confident whether the media was accurate.
Let’s say a Facebook post makes a claim about an event: “Zoos ask people to donate their small pets to feed the lions!”
Rather than trying to find out if the random person who reposted that is telling the truth, you could go to the zoo’s official website or a reputable news source and search for articles about the zoo’s methods of feeding their animals. There, you might see that the zoo has a program where farmers and residential livestock keepers can give chickens, rabbits, or other small farm animals that have died of natural causes to the zoo to help feed their large carnivores.
The first media post was sensational, meant to get you to click on it in outrage or shock. Going to a more trustworthy source, however, provided a fuller picture and context for what was really going on.
Putting it all together
Now that you have done a quick Wikipedia search on the organization, found more sources, and/or looked up the original source of a clickbait post, you can return to the first move (STOP) and answer those two questions you asked yourself.
Whether you end up agreeing, disagreeing, or being undecided on the original piece of information, you will have context that will allow you to become a better judge of whether the information is useful or not.
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About Amy
Amy is a creative technology librarian who always looks for ways to create those “ah-ha!” moments for digital learners. She enjoys writing, gadgets, and baking.