Academic Research Skills Guide

Evaluating sources that you find online can be a complex task. Lateral reading, a practice used by factcheckers, is a useful way to determine whether a website, webpage, or other online document you find online is reliable. On this page, we will outline lateral reading using SIFT, the steps developed by Mike Caulfield to assist factcheckers in evaluating online sources. If you are interested in further reading on this topic, check out Caulfield's open access book Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers.

SIFT (developed by Mike Caulfield) is a helpful acronym for initially evaluating source credibility. The SIFT steps are described below. Keep scrolling down to find videos outlining each of the steps in more detail.

STOP

• Ask yourself if you recognize the information source and if you know anything about the website or the claim's reputation. If not, you can continue with the next parts of SIFT. 
• Take note if you have a strong reaction to the information you see (e.g., joy, pride, anger). If so, slow down before you share or use that information. We tend to react quickly and with less thought to things that evoke strong feelings. By pausing, you give your brain time to process your initial response and analyze the information more critically. 

INVESTIGATE the source

• Identify where this information comes from and consider the creator's expertise and agenda
• Is it a news article that you found on a news website? If so, the source is that website. Is it information provided by a specific organization/company/etc.? If so, that organization is the source of the information.
• Investigate the source of information using other sources - this is what we mean by lateral reading. Rather than simply reviewing the "About" page on the source you are looking at, open a new tab and use your search engine to find information on that specific organization or news outlet. 
• Look at what others have said about the source to help with your evaluation. Wikipedia will often provide basic information about an organization or news outlet, including its political stance.

FIND trusted coverage

• Also sometimes referred to as "FIND better coverage"
• As you evaluate sources more regularly, you will build up a list of trusted sources that you can turn to
• Try one or more of the following fact-checking sites, which have done the verification work for you. You can use these sites to look up specific events or claims, as well as organizations
  • Snopes.com
  • Factcheck.org
  • Canada Fact Check

TRACE claims, quotes, and media back to the original context

• Many sources that you find online contain re-reported information rather than original content
• See if you can find an original source mentioned in the article (such as a research study or the original reporting)
• Return to that original source in order to recontextualize it

This overview of SIFT was adapted from a guide developed by Andrea Baer and Daniel Kipnis at Rowan University's Campbell Library. Their guide and this guide are both licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).