News Literacy
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.
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
Identifying Scholarly Sources
Identifying Scholarly Sources
Key terms:
Scholarly sources: Are written by experts for other experts in the academic or research fields. They are published in specific media types such as books, academic journals or academic conference proceedings. They adhere to specific academic guidelines for their field.
Scholarly article: An article written by a professional researcher or academic scholar who is considered an expert in their field and published in an academic journal. Works written by an expert in other forms, like a newspaper or magazine, would not be a scholarly article as it is not published in academic journal.
Academic Journal: Periodical publication that releases scholarship related to a specific academic field/discipline, such as history or biology. Academic journals typically are peer-reviewed.
Peer Review: The process by which a scholarly article is reviewed by other experts in the field before publication to evaluate if the article meets a journal's standards for publication. This process is occasionally described as “refereed”.
How to identify a peer-reviewed academic source:
Use the information below to help you identify if the source you are looking for is a peer-reviewed source or not.
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Is it published in an academic journal? Search for the journal online to see if it meets the definition above.
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Tip: You can look up journals on Ulrich's Web Global Serials Directory, which will mark if a journal is peer-reviewed.
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Was it written by a scholar or researcher in the field? Most journals will list the authors' affiliations. Search to see if the credentials are accurate, maybe look for other works by them.
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Does the item cite sources, having an extensive bibliography or reference list?
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Tip: Red flags include if the author is only citing themselves, non-scholarly publications, or fake sources.
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Search in library databases rather than Google or another search engine. Library databases clearly mark peer reviewed and academic sources for you.
Practice
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