Fact Checking Tips

When you come across articles like this you want to keep five things in mind:

• Check your emotions- We are less likely to question things that cause us extreme joy or anger. Many websites that want clicks will purposefully create headlines, or stories, that invoke these emotions. If you find yourself feeling strongly about a headline, you'll want to look into it more.
   
• Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
   
• Go upstream to the source: Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
   
• Read laterally: Read laterally. Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network. We will be covering this more in Unit 9.
   
• Circle back: If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

Adapted from Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield

Have you ever seen an article posted onto Facebook that made you angry? Have you ever shared a link you found on Twitter without reading the linked article? Odds are the answer to at least one of these questions is yes! But How can you tell if that article you shared is real and/or accurate?

This video from CrashCourse by author Jon Green explains how to do fact checking like the experts.

Lateral reading is a technique used by professional fact checkers to verify information. This video from Brandon Wilkinson from the Linfield Library will give you an overview of how to do lateral reading.