Research Guides: Refresh Your Feed: Evaluate the Credibility of Sources

How to Evaluate with SIFT

Steps of SIFT — Mike Caulfield via hapgood.us, CC BY 4.0

Evaluating sources is key to having a handle of the information you engage with. Evaluation helps you question whether you should let certain information influence your views, and can help you better understand why ways of framing or presenting information can influence (or mislead) others.

But where should you start with evaluating sources? This page outlines a framework that walks you through the steps of evaluating sources, called the SIFT Method.

Developed by Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, the SIFT framework asks you to look not just at the source itself, but its wider context, and to consider your goals in evaluating.

The Steps of Sift are 1) Stop, 2) Investigate the Source 3) Find better coverage, 4) Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.

Practice Using SIFT to Evaluate Sources

View the embedded video and use the SIFT Activity below to evaluate some example sources:

Media Evaluation Games

Play some of the games to hone your ability to detect fake media and recognize real sources.

Factitious
Read news stories and answer if they are real news or fake.
Spot the Troll
Look at actual social media accounts and guess if they are trolls/bots or legit account.
Newsfeed Defenders
Run a social media account and gain points for sharing accurate media sources.

Stop

Ask Yourself: What is Your Purpose in Evaluating?

When evaluating a source it is important to consider what you are trying to accomplish with the source.

Are you doing a quick factcheck? Consider what other step(s) of SIFT would be most efficient for ruling out misinformation.
Do you need highly credible information? Go through all the SIFT steps. Pay special focus to investigating the source's credibility.
If you are looking for the most objective information, your evaluation will focus more what makes the source accurate
If you are trying to engage with someone who disagrees with you, you may need to consider what they take as authoritative sources of information.

Investigate

Check for Indicators that Suggest Credibility

Currency - Date of Publication

How recent is the information?

Older information should be verified to check whether claims still hold true today.

Authority

Look for whether:

The expertise of authors match the content area
Was there a review process or code of ethics that the author/publisher followed?

Accuracy

Are the claims made in the source connected to facts? Is anything misrepresented?

Relevance

Does the source speak to the information you need? Is it framed in a way that is relevant to others you might be sharing it with?

Purpose

Is there any bias in motivations that could impact the veracity of the source?

Find

Look for better coverage and higher quality sources

One way to verify claims is to find corroboration between sources. Do sources you trust provide similar reporting than the source you are evaluating?

Where to Look

Besides tracking down sources from publications you are familiar with, a good place to start is by consulting background sources that provide wide overviews of topics.

See Resources for the Engaging with Opposing Viewpoints section on this guide for starting points.

Trace

Follow sources to their original context

Does the source accurately convey the information it is cites? If you follow the chain of information does it go anywhere meaningful?

A key marker of an unreliable sources is misrepresentation of the information it uses to back its claims.

Likewise, a source that has sources that do not exist or are just created by the same author or organization