SIFT

SIFT is from Tackling Wicked Problems by Cathie LeBlanc, adapted from Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield. It is a set of behaviors you can use to help guide you through encountering and checking information claims.

• (S)top: Check your emotions. If a claim causes strong emotion — anger, glee, pride, vindication — and that emotion causes you to share a “fact” with others, STOP. You must fact-check this claim. In addition, if you get lost, or hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole during your investigation, STOP. 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. In addition,
• (I)nvestigate the source: Read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
• (F)ind better coverage: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research or provided coverage that gives more useful information about the claim or the context of the claim.
• (T)race claims, quotes, and media back to the original context: Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.