News Literacy
When doing research, you may read news articles to get background or up-to-date information on a topic. How can you tell if coverage of an event is comprehensive and reliable? Mike Caulfield, head of the Digital Polarization Initiative of the American Democracy Project, recommends applying the Four Moves or SIFT. These were designed to evaluate news stories and other posts.
Stop.
Before you start reading a source, stop. Ask yourself, do you know anything about the author or source of this information? Is it from a source you recognize? If you don't know the source, move on to the next moves.
Further, this move is a reminder to stop and reflect on how you're feeling and what your goal is throughout the process. What is your goal for looking at this piece of information? Is it for academic research, to share on social media, to show a friend? It is easy in looking at a piece of media to get sucked down a rabbit hole. Stopping to reflect on what you're feeling or why you are doing something will help you stay focused.
Investigate the source.
It's important to know what you are reading before you read it. Knowing if the article you looked at was written by a prize winning economist or a lobbying group will change how you interpret the information. Not to say a lobbying group can't provide accurate information, or an economist is always right, but knowing the agenda and expertise of who created the information will help you understand it and evaluate if it's trustworthy.
Find better coverage.
Often the thing we care about in a piece of media is the claim it's making and if it is true or false. In that case it can be better to ignore the specific thing we are looking at and search for a trusted source or search for multiple sources to see what the consensus is. Often doing a quick Google search and scanning through a couple of articles can help us determine if a claim is true or false. You may need to do more research for an academic project, but this is typically enough for more casual information uses.
Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original context.
Often much of the media we see online, especially on social media platforms, has been stripped of its original context which can greatly alter its meaning. We all have seen video clips that seem to say one thing, but when placed in the context of a whole video have a completely different meaning.
Tracking claims, quotes or media back to their original context can recontextualize information and help you determine if what you saw was accurate.
The key thing to remember is that it's always a good idea to do some "external" searching after you read information of any kind - this means searching around for other sources that corroborate what you're reading, or provide more context.
How do you determine if the report you're reading is a reliable account?
What Information is Reliable?
Some information that can help you:
- Author: credentials, past work, motivation
- Remember that authority based on experience and context: I am qualified to answer questions about librarianship or research, but I am not a good authority on Biblical scholarship, or experimental cancer treatments, as I have no experience in those fields
- Publisher: how long have they been around, what else do they publish
- Funding: who funded it, conflicts of interest
- References: are there any, what are they