The SIFT Method, created by Mike Caulfield, offers a short list of things to do (the Four Moves) to assess the credibility of a resource. This helps students spot fake news, avoid clickbait, and get better at sorting truth from fiction.
The four moves are:
S: Stop
I: Investigate the source
F: Find better coverage
T: Trace claims, quotes, and media to original context
When you first start to read a page or post, STOP and ask yourself a few questions:
If you don’t have that information, use the other moves to get a sense of what you’re looking at. Don’t read it or share media until you know what it is.
If you feel yourself getting overwhelmed in your fact-checking efforts, STOP and take a second to remember your purpose. If you just want to repost, read an interesting story, or get a high-level explanation of a concept, it’s probably good enough to find out whether the publication is reputable. If you are doing deep research of your own, you may want to chase down individual claims in a newspaper article and independently verify them.
You want to know what you’re reading before you read it.
Knowing the expertise and agenda of the source is crucial to your interpretation of what they say. Taking sixty seconds to figure out where media is from before reading will help you decide if it is worth your time, and if it is, help you to better understand its significance and trustworthiness.
What claim is the article is making? Do you know if it is true or false? Do you know if it represents a consensus viewpoint, or if it is the subject of much disagreement?
If you're unsure of the answers to these questions, your best strategy may be to ignore the source that reached you, and look for trusted reporting or analysis on the claim.
In other words, “find other coverage” that better suits your needs, such as articles that are:
Understanding the context and history of a claim will help you better evaluate it and form a starting point for future investigation.
Much of what we find on the internet has been stripped of context. A short video clip or news snippet is just a small part of the complete picture.
Ask yourself:
In some cases you'll have you trace the claim, quote, or media back to the source, so you can see it in its original context and get a sense if the version you saw was accurately presented.
The SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield.
All information on this page is adapted from Caulfield's materials under a CC BY 4.0 license.
