Pause. Consider. Decide.
Though information- and misinformation- comes at us all day, everyday, there are concrete steps that you can take to build your expert toolkit, and know what to trust.
Cultivate a critical mindset about user-generated content, unfamiliar organizations, and content shared by recognized news sources, by practicing and developing the habits outlined in the News Literacy Project's 7 Steps.
How can you reconstruct the context of an online information source in order to make a solid judgment about its reliability? The SIFT framework by Mike Caulfield offers simple and empowering guidance.
Dig in to the reliability of the sources quoted or embedded within news stories themselves using the IMVAIN framework, developed by Stony Brook Center for News Literacy.
Definitions
This guide will help you become a more discerning reader and viewer of news media. The links below define some useful categories to keep in mind.
Parody - assumes the appearance of news as a form of humor (e.g., The Onion, The Daily Show)
Misinformation - presents inaccurate or incomplete information for one or more of the following reasons:
- to sensationalize a topic for increased attention (e.g., clickbait)
- to support a particular point of view (e.g., bias)
- to deliberately mislead people (e.g., disinformation, hoax, propaganda)
Resources for Verifying and Fact Checking
- Factcheck.orgA nonprofit organization which aims to monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players.
- Google Fact Check ExplorerThis tool allows you to easily browse and search for fact checks. For example, you can search for a politician's statement, or for a topic. You can also restrict results to a specific publisher.
- Lead StoriesFact checking and debunking website
- PolitifactThe Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact researches the claims of politicians and checks their accuracy.
- SnopesA well established debunking site which provides citations to its sources.
- PoynterPoynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization. Their site contains excellent fact checking resources and their MediaWise section offers support for teaching media literacy concepts.
- LinkedInLinkedIn can be used to discover the credentials and areas of expertise of authors of news stories. However, use additional tools such as a general web search to verify what you find or to reveal competing claims.
- Know Your MemeA website dedicated to documenting Internet phenomena such as viral videos and image macros.
- Science FeedbackWorldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in science based media coverage.
- RetractionWatch.comA blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers.