Mike Caulfield (Director of Blended & Networked Learning at Washington State University) developed this short list of things to do when looking at an information source, drawing on the habits of professional fact checkers.
Infographic for SIFT by Mike Caulfield from Check, Please! Starter Course, used under CC-BY license.
Read about these "four moves", and watch the short videos below to learn more about these techniques.
These short videos by Mike Caulfield provide a good introduction to the S.I.F.T. method. (These were made before he coined the acronym, so the order is slightly different, but the basic ideas are the same.)
This video illustrates the importance of evaluating sources through something called “lateral reading” (when evaluating a website, looking at what others have said about that page, rather than relying primarily on what the site says about itself).
This video introduces the technique of looking up a source in Wikipedia as a first step towards learning more about a site or organization.
For more detailed instructions for investigating a source you find online, go to Investigating the Source on this guide.
You may often find a claim or piece of information online that isn't coming directly from the individual or organization who made it. Here are some tips on to going "upstream" to find the source.
Professional fact checkers seek out coverage of an issue from reliable sources.
Adapted from Mike Caulfield, "Evaluating a Website or Publication's Authority", Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers, used under a CC-BY 4.0 license.