Introduction to Research

The open web allows us to create and share information so quickly that it's sometimes hard to tell when information on a website is well-researched, credible, and offered in good faith, and when it isn't. Elected officials tell us to trust one news source over others; teachers give us inconsistent methods to evaluate online information; even scientists and experts have conflicting theories about how to address important global issues. At the end of the day, how do you know which information to trust?  

Below, we'll offer some strategies for evaluating information online. These strategies will help you think more critically about all the information you encounter and encourage you to look beyond the surface features of a web site or journal--things like a professional look, whether it's a .com or .org, or --in order to decide how trustworthy the source is.

In order to decide if an article, blog post, website, or claim you find online is credible, you'll need to think like a fact-checker. That means you'll sometimes need to look beyond the information presented on the web page itself.

When you come across a source, do a quick initial assessment. What do you already know about this source? If the site or claim is new to you, do the following four moves:

• Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim. Sites like Politifact, Snopes, or even Wikipedia can be helpful for this.
• Read laterally: Do you recognize the author, the publication, or the website? If not, open up a new tab and search for those key terms to find out what others are saying about the source of this information.
• Go upstream: Is this the original source of the information, or is this a re-publication of an interpretation of previously published work? Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Sometimes you can do this by clicking hyperlinks; other times you'll need to open a new browser window and do a web search. 
• 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 Michael A. Caulfield's Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers and Rowan University's Evaluating Sources Toolkit, both licensed under CC 4.0.