The SIFT method
If you take away only one thing from this chapter, let it be this: the SIFT method. It was developed by the American media educator Mike Caulfield and consists of four moves that are easy to remember. The best part: a SIFT check often takes only seconds to a minute.
The four moves in the original: Stop. Investigate the source. Find better coverage. Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original context.
— Mike Caulfield, SIFT (The Four Moves) (hapgood.us)
S: Stop
Before you read, believe or share: pause briefly. Two questions are enough:
- Do I even know this source and its reputation?
- What do I actually want to know?
Stop also means: don't share on reflex. If a post stirs you up strongly, that is precisely the signal to pause, not to click.
I: Investigate the source
Find out who is behind the information before you internalise the content. You don't have to write a doctoral thesis: it is enough to know whether the source is a reputable specialist outlet, a lobby group, a satire site or an anonymous blog.
The trick for this is called lateral reading.
F: Find better coverage
Often we are not interested in the specific page at all, but in whether the claim is true. In that case: feel free to set the original source aside and see what other, trustworthy sources say about the topic. Do several independent, reputable sources report the same thing? Or is the claim found only in a single, dubious corner of the internet?
T: Trace (back to the original)
Online, claims, quotes, images and videos are often torn out of context. Trace them back to the original source: was the quote really said that way? Does the photo really come from this event? Does the study really support what someone makes of it?
Stop · Investigate the source · Find better coverage · Trace back to the original. Four moves, one minute.
The key technique: lateral reading
With lateral reading ("reading sideways") you judge a page not by staying on it and reading what it says about itself. Instead you leave it, open a new tab and check what others write about it.
This sounds trivial, but it is the decisive difference between professionals and amateurs. The Stanford History Education Group (Wineburg & McGrew) had historians, students and professional fact-checkers assess websites. The result:
- Historians and students read vertically, i.e. they stayed on the page and fell for "easily manipulated features such as official-looking logos and domain names".
- The fact-checkers read laterally, i.e. they left the page after a brief look and reached "more warranted conclusions in a fraction of the time".
Source: Wineburg & McGrew, Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise, Teachers College Record 2019 (link).
You come across the site "Institute for Climate Truth" with a reputable-looking logo. Vertical: you read the nice "About us" and are impressed. Lateral: you open a tab, search the name + "criticism" or "funding" and read the Wikipedia entry, and learn that the organisation is funded by the fossil-fuel industry. Only now can you put the content in context.
Bonus: click restraint
A small, powerful habit of the professionals: click restraint. Don't click reflexively on the first search result; first skim the list of hits: titles, domains, descriptions; and then deliberately head for the most trustworthy source. The first result is not the best, only the best optimised.
Why not just a checklist?
There are classic checking checklists such as the CRAAP test (see next page). Caulfield's criticism of them: anyone who works through a page only "from the inside" looks precisely at the features that are easiest to fake. SIFT turns the tables and says: out of the page, into the context. Both have their place; SIFT is the faster first reflex.