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A Fact Checker's Guide to the Internet: 3 Habits of Awesome Researchers: STOP!

This guide will support you and educate you in the tools of Internet research with an eye towards the truth. Invest your time into stories, info, and facts that are true and valid and prevent you from being fooled.

Before you do anything...

Student Evaluation Skills

Feeling overwhelmed? You're not alone...

In 2016, a study asked nearly 8,000 students in middle school, high school and college to perform five web evaluation tasks. Here are some of the results:

  • 80% of students couldn't distinguish "sponsored content" (such as advertisements) from news articles on websites.
  • 67% of students failed to recognize potential bias in online information
  • 65% of students took online images (such as memes, videos, and photos) at face value
  • and, almost all struggled to evaluate information on social media

Source: Wineburg, Sam, Sarah McGrew, Joel Breakstone, and Teresa Ortega. Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository, 22 Nov. 2016.

Some quick questions to ask at STOP

  • What type of content is this? (Is it news, opinion, or entertainment? Is it biased?)
  • Who wrote/created and published it? (Who is the author or organization -- are they trustworthy?)
  • Why was it created? (To inform or to pursuade?)
  • When was it published? (Is the information current or outdated?)

If the answer to any of these questions is, "I don't know," then it is time to move onto the next step of SIFT--Investigate.

The Miseducation of Dylann Roof Video

This video discusses the dangers of online disinformation and why it's important to STOP and learn about where information comes from.

Prebunking

Prebunking allows students to understand the motivations of those who spread disinformation, and thus, helps them to recognize false and biased content when they encounter it. This can be achieved through online games, such as Bad News, where students become the purveyors of "fake news" themselves (in a controlled manner) in order to understand and neutralize the effects of online disinformation. 

Prebunking uses the social psychology method of "attitude inoculation," which (similar to how vaccines inoculate our bodies against harmful viruses), helps to build up a person's resistance to disinformation. This idea works hand-in-hand with the first step of SIFT, which is STOP. Being mindful of the motives of disinformation creators can help students to stop and think before using or sharing questionable sources.