WRIT 1150 (Fuisz): Writing & Culture Seminar

SIFT is an evaluative method developed by Mike Caufield, a digital literacy expert, for evaluating online sources, particularly online news and social media posts. Before selecting a web source to use in your research or share on social media, use the following four moves to determine how reliable and valid its claims are. SIFT is a kind of lateral reading, which is a method of fact checking by looking at other sources for verification.

The four moves — Stop, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, and Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context — will help you become a more savvy information user and choose higher quality sources. 

Below you'll find basic information and a brief, introductory video for each of the 4 moves.

1. STOP

• Check your emotions.
• Do you know and trust the author, website, or source of the information?
• If not, use the fact-checking techniques below before determining whether to use the source.

2. INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

• Step away from the source.
• Use other websites such as Wikipedia to learn more about the author and the source publication.
• Consider whether the source has a particular bias.

3. FIND BETTER COVERAGE 

• Focus on verifying the claim the source makes.
• Seek out the best, most in-depth coverage of the information.
• Use sources such as Google Scholar & Google News to find additional sources that corroborate or refute the claims made by the original source.
• Use an interdisciplinary library database such as ProQuest Central or  Academic Search Premier to look for more scholarly articles on the topic  Use a Subject Specific database to find coverage in specific fields. 
• Go to the Library's A-Z Database list, choose the subject you are interested in from the drop-down list, and then get a list of databases in that subject area. Pick one and search

4. TRACE CLAIMS, QUOTES, & MEDIA TO THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT 

• Find the original context and gauge the accuracy of the version you saw.
• Search Google News for relevant stories.
• Reverse image search to find the original image.
• Consult fact-checking websites such as Snopes.

Source: Mike Caufield. SIFT: The Four Moves. https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves. License: CC BY 4.0.

For further information about SIFT, see the link above or take Caufield's three-hour online minicourse.

Verifying Scholarly Articles

Sometimes when you are evaluating a non-news article, you want to verify that it is truely a scholarly article

What are the Author's credentials? 

• Look on the 1st or last page of the Article - This usually gives the author's credentials 
• Look the article title in a library database such as: ProQuest Central, Academic Search Premier, or Web of Science (covers all topics).  Click the title to see the full entry, and it will give the author's institution & program
• Look up the Author name in Google Scholar to see if they have a Scholar Bio page

Is the Journal Peer Reviewed? 

• Search for the Journal's WebSite - Look at the About section or Instructions for Authors section, and if it is peer-reviewed it will be noted  
• Look the article title in a library database such as: ProQuest Central, Academic Search Premier, or Web of Science (covers all topics).  Before searching - Check the box that limits to Peer Reviewed Sources only.

Does the article have References

The article should have references - footnotes, in-text citations, and/or a bibliography at the end.  Articles without sources listed are rarely scholarly.