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Research Guides

Misinformation: Evaluating & Fact Checking

Why Evaluate Websites?

Since anyone can put information online, it is important to be able to evaluate whether information as reliable or appropriate to scholarship.

Determining reliability requires practice and critical thinking. This page lists some questions that you should ask yourself before accepting or rejecting a website for its scholarly value.

If in doubt about the merits of a website for research purposes, please discuss it with your instructor or a librarian.

Things to Think About

Things to Think About When Evaluating Sources

Quick Questions

  • Who is behind the information? What are the author's credentials? 
  • What is the evidence?
  • What do other sources say?

Additional Questions

  • What website is the source part of?
  • What is the purpose and intended audience of that website?
  • What information can you find about the overall website/organization from other websites?
  • Where did the author get the information they presented in the source? Is the information accurately conveyed?
  • Is the information recent/up-to-date?
  • What are the overall strengths or limitations of the source?

 

Fact Checking Resources

Evaluating Sources: SIFT

Navigating online sources can be difficult enough, even without websites and posts sharing mis/disinformation! 

When evaluating online sources, keep the acronym SIFT in mind! 

S: Stop!

  • Before you start reading an article, ask yourself if you know the source of information.
  • Quickly check to see if the website or source is reputable. 

I: Investigate the Source

  • Know the expertise and agenda of your source for further interpretation. See what other sources have said about this particular source.
  • Consider using a fact-checking site.

F: Find Trusted Coverage

  • Look at multiple sources to find a general consensus on your topic. 
  • Look for different viewpoints and more in-depth articles.

T: Trace to the Original
  • Avoid drawing conclusions from claims, quotes, and media. Often only snippets of information are presented in order to paint a specific picture. 
  • Contextualize information by tracing back to the original source to see if the information was accurately presented. 
  • Ask questions like, "was this event accurately reported in the news?" and "Is this article missing a larger picture of the full truth?" 

For more information about SIFT and evaluating online sources, check out these selected articles:

Evaluating Media Bias

Everyone has biases and no publication can be entirely neutral, though some are more biased than others. These resources can help you detect and evaluate for bias.

Media Bias Charts

Media bias charts can help us quickly get a sense of where news outlets tend to lie on a political spectrum. Ad Fontes and AllSides are two organizations that have developed media bias charts, with clear methodologies applied by diverse staff.

Read more about these charts below:

AllSides Media Bias Chart Version 7.1

Go to AllSides.com for their most recent chart and more information.

Ad Fontes Media media bias chart version 7.0

Go to AdFontesMedia.com for their most recent chart and more information.

Citations

It can be easy to (mis)attribute a quote or piece of information to someone out of context.  This is why crediting sources and complete citations are important -- so you can go to the original source and verify that what is being quoted is true.  Unfortunately, just because it looks like it has a citation doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

Take a look at the examples below. Do these quotes look authentic? And are they?

Abraham Lincoln obviously couldn't have said this:

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet just because there's a picture with a quote next to it."

But how easy is it tell on first glance if this quote is authentic?

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Lincoln did not say this, and the quote perhaps traces back to a 1947 advertisement for a book on graceful aging. In Februrary 2017, the GOP's official Twitter tweeted this quote, attributing it to Lincoln, and quickly received flack and took it down.  A quick Google image search of the quote shows it would be an easy mistake to make, with countless examples of the quote + image format.  See the Snopes analysis of this misattribution for an image of the 1947 ad.

And what about this?

If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican.

Trump did not say this in People in 1998. The quote is an example of disinformation--it appears to have been deliberately fabricated, and began spreading around online at least as early as fall 2015. It plays into confirmation bias, with people critical of Trump perhaps more likely to accept the quote without question because it confirms their view.