Education Research Guide

SIFT is a series of actions you can take to determine the validity and reliability of claims and sources on the web.

The SIFT method, or strategy, is quick and simple and can be applied to various kinds of online content: news articles, scholarly articles, social media posts, videos, images, etc.

Each letter in SIFT corresponds to one of the Four Moves:

Stop

Investigate the source

Find better coverage

Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context

Find more details on the Four Moves from Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This useful video tutorial walks one through the process of lateral reading, showcasing not only what the process is, but how to do it with a real example. 

Popular Magazines

The primary purpose of these periodicals is to produce a profit for the publisher. Examples include Time, Newsweek, and People.

Available for public purchase at stores and newsstands

• As a whole, are designed to persuade, to entertain, and to sell advertised products
• The articles are short and are written to entertain the general public, not necessarily to inform
• Articles may also consist of brief summaries of research done by others
• Articles are seldom footnoted, and the source for the information is rarely provided
• Articles are usually written by freelance writers or members of the magazine's staff
• Articles often are illustrated with color graphics and photographs
• Advertisements are aimed at the general public

General Interest Magazines

The primary purpose of these periodicals is to provide information in a general manner to a broad audience. Examples include 

Sports Illustrated, Fast Company, and Rolling Stone.  

• Articles generally written by a member of the editorial staff or a freelance writer
• Language of articles geared to any educated audience, no subject expertise assumed
• No peer review process
• Sources are sometimes cited, but more often there are no footnotes or bibliography

Trade Journals

The primary purpose of trade journals is to provide news and information to people in a particular industry or profession. Examples include Women's Wear Daily, Hotel and Motel Management, Lodging, and Travel Weekly.

• Can be published by for-profit corporations, but are often published by a professional association
• Editorial staff, which selects the articles, consists mainly of individuals with experience or education within the industry or profession
• Authors are usually practitioners or educators within the industry or profession
• Articles focus on practical topics of interest to practitioners
• Articles rarely report original research, but excellent sources of statistical information about the industries they cover
• Articles often are illustrated with color graphics and photographs similar in nature to the popular magazines
• Journals often include employment announcements for job vacancies within the industry or profession
• Articles may not be extensively documented, providing few footnotes and rarely including bibliographies
• Advertisements are for industrial or specialized products and are aimed at people in that industry or profession

Scholarly Journals

The primary purpose of scholarly journals is to inform and to report on original research or experimentation. Examples include New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Safety Research, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Annals of Tourism Research.

• Usually published by a scholarly professional association or university
• Editors are usually scholars in the field with established reputations. Before the editors accept an article for publication, it is first reviewed by scholars or researchers in the field
• Illustrations, if any, are usually graphs or charts, with few color graphics or photographs
• Articles are lengthy and extensively documented, with all references provided in footnotes or end notes
• Authors have conducted research in the field and are usually affiliated with a university or research center; authors' credentials are usually listed at the beginning or at the end of the articles
• Authors write in the language of their discipline
• Readers, usually other scholars or college students, are assumed to have some knowledge of the field and to be familiar with the jargon
• Articles are usually preceded by abstracts (summaries)
• Scholarly journals contain few, if any, advertisements

• Snopes is one of the biggest fact checking websites on the internet and covers a very wide range of topics from the newsworthy (political claims, health treatments) to the more niche (small clickbait stories you might see on Twitter). They have a search bar, which can be invaluable to tracking down specific content. While the ratings of (true, false, misleading, ect) on each article are a quick shorthand to gage accuracy of a story, looking at the full reporting is often valuable as ratings can be subjective and the full reporting allows you to make your own judgement calls. 

• Another general fact checking website. Like Snopes they do have a search feature and they also have a dropdown menu that allows one to browse fact checks by popular topics around the world. They also run Sci Check which fact checks claims about science in the media and Players Guide 2022 which follows groups that seek to influence the 2022 election. The Players Guide is a great resource for recognizing astroturf, which is when lobbying organizations or corporate interest groups impersonate concerned citizens to influence political change. 

• Another fact checking website that focuses on politics. They have a database that can be used to find claims by verdict, author and type of bias. 

• Retraction Watch is a database that contains lists of scientific articles that have been retracted. Scientific articles can be retracted for a variety of reasons, but when an article is retracted it is considered not a reliable source of information. One of the great things about Retraction Watch is that the database search includes the reasons an article was retracted in their results which is crucial information that can sometimes be more difficult to find. They also have a blog where they cover retractions on a weekly basis for those interested in scientific fraud. 

• All Sides is a website that reports on media bias. On their website, they have a media bias chart that labels news sources by their partisan slant. They also have a similar chart for fact checking websites. For those interested in types of media bias, their list of different kinds of bias may be informative.