False News
Fake news is easily spread in this day and age. However, there are some ways that we can educate ourselves in order to not fall victim to fake news. In class, we learned about SIFT, a way in which anybody can fact-check information they find and the root of the source.
Stop, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to the Original Context: SIFT. Evaluating a source is probably one of the most important things we can do as consumers of the media.
The University of West Florida published tips to help avoid fake news, and it is similar to SIFT. This helpful way of remembering to evaluate a source is called CRAAP. The criteria of CRAAP is Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.
Currency: is the information current? This is helpful to ask yourself when reading an article. An article published years ago most likely will not hold as much weight in current times as it did when the article was originally published.
Relevance: is the information important to your research needs? Let’s say you are using specific information you found for a paper or research study, it is vital that the information you found is the appropriate level for what you are looking for.
Authority: who is the author/publisher of the news? Do they have authority on the subject? Do they have an agenda? These are all important questions when gathering information. You are probably better off getting news from a reliable, unbiased news source such as ABC or Reuters than you are from Tik Tok. The Interactive Media Bias Chart is an insightful tool for checking your sources.
Accuracy: is the information supported by evidence? Does the author cite credible sources? For myself personally, I try to use the most reliable scholarly articles as possible, but who really has the time to sit there and dissect every source that is cited? Unfortunately, this might be more important than we think for getting reliable news.
Purpose: what is the purpose of this news? To outrage? Call to action? To inform? To sell? Taking a moment to really think about the purpose of an article or information from sources can be very insightful to the bias of the source.
CRAAP is something I had never heard about before, but with the use of SIFT and CRAAP, we can start spreading reliable news one step at a time. Unfortunately, fact-checking to this extent is something that is very important in this day and age, but it is better safe than sorry.
