Service Alert
Many strategies that students learn for evaluating sources rely on "close reading," which focuses on the features of a text itself (Wineburg et al., 2020). This is why students often pay attention to the layout of a website or the presence of images or charts, even though this does not actually indicate credibility (Wineburg & McGrew, 2019).
These strategies are ineffective and a waste of time when applied to Internet sources (Wineburg et al., 2020).
A better strategy is “lateral reading,” or learning about a source before evaluating information from that source itself (Wineburg & McGrew, 2019). This is how professional fact-checkers efficiently evaluate information from unfamiliar sources.
This paper from Stanford History Education Group describes how professional fact-checkers outperformed university students and even PhD professors at evaluating information online.
The SIFT Method below outlines how students can employ lateral reading to evaluate unfamiliar sources online and on social media (Caulfield, 2019).
Do you know the website or source of information? Do not immediately accept claims as fact.
Be skeptical of new information from unfamiliar sources. Check your bearings and consider your purpose.
Find out the expertise and agenda of your source. Look up your source in Wikipedia or a search engine.
Consider what other sites say about your source. Open multiple tabs and explore.
Look for verifiable information on the topic from reputable sources like major newspapers, fact-checking organizations, or official reports.
Scan multiple sources to find out what the consensus is or where there are controversies. Use Ctrl + F to find specific words.
Trace images, videos, quotes, and data to their original sources to see how the information relates to its original context.
Do the images actually represent what the source claims? Is the video from the same event that the source says it's from?
