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Evaluate Your Sources
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To evaluate whether a post, article, or video is trustworthy, you can ask yourself: Who created it? What type of information is it? Where did you find it? When was it created and when was it last updated? Why is this a good source?
Once you have answered these questions (with the help of lateral reading--see the box below for more), you still need to check with one more source: yourself. What biases might you be holding? Click over to the next tab, Confirmation Bias, to find out.
See also: Evaluating Sources with the 5 Ws from the Woodbridge Campus Library.
Watch this video from Derek Muller of Veritasium, and see if you can guess his number pattern.
How are the video participants experiencing confirmation bias?
Watch this video, which uses peanut butter and jelly to explain the concept of implicit bias.
You can also go deeper by answering questions available on the PBS website while you watch.
- Headline RoundupsAllSides Headline Roundups™ bring you the day's top news stories from the left, center and right of the political spectrum — side-by-side so you can see the full picture. Comparing coverage across the spectrum allows us to present diverse perspectives and expose media bias by showing how different news sources spin or sensationalize the same story.
- Red Blue TranslatorControversial terms tend to shut down dialogue because they mean different things to different people. The AllSides Red Blue Translator™ cuts the confusion by revealing how people across the political spectrum think and feel differently about the same term or phrase. "Translated" terms include Abortion, Bailout, Capital Punishment/Death Penalty, Debate, Economy, and hundreds more.
- Fake News, Misinformation, and Media BiasThe ability to tell accurate news from misinformation is an important skill that you'll use for the rest of your life. This guide from NOVA Libraries (Alexandria) will give you valuable insight in telling fact from fiction online.
- 16 Types of Media BiasThis list from AllSides.com includes Spin, Unsubstantiated Claims, Opinion Statements Presented as Facts, Sensationalism/Emotionalism, Mudslinging/Ad Hominem, Mind Reading, Slant, Flawed Logic, Bias by Omission, Omission of Source Attribution, Bias by Story Choice and Placement, Subjective Qualifying Adjectives, Word Choice, Negativity Bias, Photo Bias, and Elite v. Populist Bias.
Here are 3 things to do to check a claim (for more details see How to Check a Claim from Alexandria Campus Library):
- Check with Fact-Checkers - others may have already investigated this claim.
- Go to the Source - who published the claim?
- What Do Others Say about the Source (Lateral Reading)?
Based on "Four Moves" from Michael A. Caulfield's Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers.
Test your ability to spot fake pandemic-related news by playing the online game Factitious: Pandemic.
Lateral Reading
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"Lateral" means "from side to side." Picture your web browser with several tabs open. You can switch between these tabs to look up different information about an article that you are trying to evaluate. Before you can evaluate the content of the article, you want to know if you can trust the publisher and the author. Use different tabs in your web browser to check up on the publisher and the author: who is paying them; what are they trying to sell you; how qualified are they?
Click on "What Is Lateral Reading?" and "How to Read Laterally" (tabs above this text) for how-to videos.