SIFT ( The Four Moves) is an evaluation method developed by digital literacy expert Michael Caulfield from the Washington State University Vancouver Canada, to help you learn to think like a fact-checker begin to sort fact from fiction and everything in between on the Web.
The SIFT strategy is quick and can be applied to evaluate various kinds of online content: Social media posts, memes, statistics, videos, images, news articles, scholarly articles, etc.
SIFT is a series of actions to take to do when you are trying to determined the credibility of a source you have found online. These " things to do" are called moves. There are four of them . The four moves: Stop, Investigate the sources, find better coverage, trace the original context.
The acronym you use to remember the action steps is SIFT
Adapted from SIFT:STOP,Investigate, FInd, Trace: What is SIFT? Wayne State University Library System
Fake out is an interactive game designed to see how good you are at recognizing true vs false stories on the web.
To play Fakeout!, click here. (Direct URL: https://newsliteracy.ca/fakeOut/)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Below are a few prompts to work through to help you make the Moves to evaluate sources for credibility.
" I" INVESTIGATE THE SOURCES
Keanu Reeves prompt
Note: This SIFT method guide was adapted from Michael Caulfield's "Check, Please!" course. The canonical version of this course exists at http://lessons.checkplease.cc. The text and media of this site, where possible, is released into the CC-BY, and free for reuse and revision. We ask people copying this course to leave this note intact, so that students and teachers can find their way back to the original (periodically updated) version if necessary. We also ask librarians and reporters to consider linking to the canonical version.
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