Pdf Sift A Method For Evaluating Information Sources What Does Sift St

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 10:28 PM

pdf sift a method for evaluating information sources what does sift st

The SIFT method is an evaluation strategy developed by digital literacy expert, Mike Caulfield, to help determine whether online content can be trusted for credible or reliable sources of information. All SIFT information on this page is adapted from his materials with a CC BY 4.0 license. Determining if resources are credible is challenging. Use the SIFT method to help you analyze information, especially news or other online media. Before you read or share an article or video, STOP! Be aware of your emotional response to the headline or information in the article.

Headlines are often meant to get clicks, and will do so by causing the reader to have a strong emotional response. What you already know about the topic. What is SIFT (Infographic) This link opens in a new window The SIFT information presented has been adapted from materials by Mike Caulfield with a CC BY 4.0 This link opens in a new window license. Check out Shapiro Library's Emily Evaluates series!

Emily Evaluates with SIFT is a 6 part narrative series of 1-2 minute videos in which a college student named Emily investigates accusations of fraud made against one of her professors using the SIFT... Follow along as Emily applies the SIFT steps in a real world scenario! SIFT is a source evaluation methodology created by Mike Caulfield, a misinformation researcher. SIFT is a four-step method that helps you quickly evaluate online information by focusing your attention on what matters. The four moves—Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims to the original context—guide you in identifying reliable sources, avoiding misinformation, and amplifying accurate content. By applying these moves with simple web techniques, you can become a more discerning consumer of information and resist the pull of clickbait.

The SIFT method is especially helpful for evaluating news, social media, or other online media. SIFT is a series of actions you can take to determine the validity and reliability of claims and sources on the web. SIFT is an additional set of skills to build on checklist approaches to evaluating online content. The SIFT method, or strategy, is quick, simple, and can be applied to various kinds of online content: news articles, scholarly articles, social media posts, videos, images, etc. Each letter in SIFT corresponds to one of the Four Moves: Modified from Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ask yourself whether you know and trust the website or source of the information. Feel yourself getting overwhelmed in your fact-checking efforts? STOP and take a second to remind yourself what your goal is. Now that you’ve found a source, how do you know whether to believe what it’s telling you? No source is inherently perfect, but some are more credible than others. The credibility of a source depends in part on the author (Do they know anything about this subject?), the method used to produce the information (Do they cite sources or justify their claims?), and...

Is there a comments section?). One method for investigating the credibility of a source is to use the steps of SIFT: SIFT is an action method for evaluating sources, especially those that make claims on the web and social media. When you initially encounter a source of information and start to read it—stop. Ask yourself whether you know and trust the author, publisher, publication, or website. If you don’t, use the other fact-checking moves that follow, to get a better sense of what you’re looking at.

In other words, don’t read, share, or use the source in your research until you know what it is, and you can verify it is reliable. This is a particularly important step, considering what we know about the attention economy—social media, news organizations, and other digital platforms purposely promote sensational, divisive, and outrage-inducing content that emotionally hijacks our attention in... Stop and check your emotions before engaging! You don’t have to do a three-hour investigation into a source before you engage with it. But if you’re reading a piece on economics, and the author is a Nobel prize-winning economist, that would be useful information. Likewise, if you’re watching a video on the many benefits of milk consumption, you would want to be aware if the video was produced by the dairy industry.

This doesn’t mean the Nobel economist will always be right and that the dairy industry can’t ever be trusted. But knowing the expertise and agenda of the person who created the source is crucial to your interpretation of the information provided. When investigating a source, fact-checkers read “laterally” across many websites, rather than digging deep (reading “vertically”) into the one source they are evaluating. That is, they don’t spend much time on the source itself, but instead they quickly get off the page and see what others have said about the source. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the source they’re investigating. Information literacy is defined as knowing when you need information, then knowing how to find it, evaluate it, and use it effectively.

In this module, we'll focus on the evaluate part of that definition. You’ll learn how to use the SIFT method, a simple 4-step process to evaluate information to help you decide if your sources are credible and appropriate for your college assignments. By the end of this module, you will be able to: Whether you’re writing a research paper, sharing a post online, or just trying to understand a topic, taking time to evaluate your sources helps you make informed decisions and avoid misinformation. This chapter introduces the SIFT method, a simple set of steps that can help you quickly determine whether a source is reliable. You’ll also learn about lateral reading, a strategy professional fact-checkers use to investigate unfamiliar sources by looking outside the source itself.

Together, these tools will help you become a smarter, more critical, and more confident information user. Before you read or watch something, stop and ask yourself: “Do I know and trust this source?” If not, use the other SIFT steps to learn more about it. Stopping can also be helpful during the investigation process. If you find yourself falling down an internet rabbit hole or feeling overwhelmed, pause and remind yourself of your goal. What do you really need to know?

Are you getting closer to that goal or just clicking around aimlessly? Refocus if needed.

Pdf Sift A Method For Evaluating Information Sources What Does Sift St

People Also Search

The SIFT Method Is An Evaluation Strategy Developed By Digital

Headlines Are Often Meant To Get Clicks, And Will Do

Emily Evaluates With SIFT Is A 6 Part Narrative Series

The SIFT Method Is Especially Helpful For Evaluating News, Social

Ask Yourself Whether You Know And Trust The Website Or