Over the past few years, we’ve seen social media swamped with misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracies about subjects from pedophilic pizza parlors to election fraud to Ukrainian biolabs. We’ve all seen the “I did my own research” claims coming from some of the people working with the worst information out there—fatally, in many cases, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s so much bad information out there ranging from misinformation to Nazis pretending to be something else. And a lot of it is very sophisticated, hiding its true nature until many readers have been sucked in. Here are two simple ways to tell good information from bad.
First, a very easy, short Twitter thread from Stanford University professor Sam Wineburg:
Second, I saw this thread when it was retweeted by misinformation researcher Mike Caulfield, whose SIFT method is a really important tool in vetting information. It’s really simple:
- Stop
- Do you know the website or source of information? Start with a plan. Check your bearings and consider what you want to know and your purpose. Usually, a quick check is enough. Sometimes you'll want a deep investigation to verify all claims made and check all the sources.
- Investigate the Source
- Know the expertise and agenda of your source so you can interpret it. Look up your source in Wikipedia. Consider what other sites say about your source. A fact checking site may help. Read carefully and consider while you click. Open multiple tabs.
- Find trusted coverage
- Find trusted reporting or analysis, look for the best information on a topic, or scan multiple sources to see what consensus is. Find something more in-depth and read about more viewpoints. Look beyond the first few results, use Ctrl + F, and consider the URL. Even if you don't agree with the consensus, it will help you investigate further.
- Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original context
- Trace claims, quotes and media back to the source. What was clipped out of a story/photo/video and what happened before or after? When you read the research paper mentioned in a news story, was it accurately reported? Find the original source to see the context, so you can decide if the version you have is accurately presented.
There you go. It’s not exactly your PhD in anti-disinfo, but it’s a start in not being fooled.