Information moves fast but we don't have to

In my last year of high school, I went on a field trip to a university where we worked on a research project in their library. I distinctly remember using a card catalogue to search for items in the library. A card catalogue was a big cabinet with drawers upon drawers of neatly typed index cards that listed each resource and where it was. You would flip through the cards, write down the pertinent information, and then go find the resource on the shelves. Finding information was slow work and could involve multiple trips between the shelves and the card catalogue.

By the time I enrolled in university the next year, card catalogues in libraries had largely been replaced by online catalogues. This was great because I could search for what I needed from the comfort of my residence, make a list, and then head to the library to pull what I needed. The internet was still new then, and professors sternly warned us against using newfangled information resources like Wikipedia. Since then, Wikipedia has proven itself to be a reasonably good resource when used appropriately. But at the time, I would have been docked marks for citing it in an assignment.

In the latter half of my bachelor’s degree, research for my assignments could be done almost exclusively online. More and more journal articles were available online, accessible with my university library card. Trips to the library were reserved for older items available only in print, to work on group assignments, or for a change of scenery. Within the span of only a few years, information that would take an entire day of work to gather now took only a few hours. The internet being dubbed the “information superhighway” at the time was apt. Information was now fast, plentiful and at your fingertips.

This increase in speed and quantity, however, has not necessarily meant an increase in the quality of information we have access to. Poor quality information is by no means a modern affliction – it’s always been important to critically evaluate the information we consume whether we find it in a book, documentary, online, or by word of mouth. However, the massive amount of information we have to sift through makes it more difficult to discern what information is reliable.

A new method of evaluating information asks us to slow down our information seeking behavior and take the time to critically evaluate that information. Created by Mike Caulfield of the University of Washington, the SIFT method (also called “The Four Moves”) stands for:

• Stop

• Investigate the source

• Find better sources

• Trace claims, quotes, and media to their original context

The first step, stop, asks us to take a pause before we share the information we are seeing and do a gut check. Did the information rile us up on some way? Did it make us angry or scared? That in itself could be a clue that the information we are viewing is not accurate. Social media engagement often relies on “rage farming” to make us share information that evokes a strong emotional response but that might not be reliable.

The next three steps involve fact checking. This includes looking up the background of the source of information, verifying it by looking for other trustworthy sources, and checking whether the information has been taken out of context. These steps can be applied to any source of information – be it from a book, video, podcast, or website.

In practice, using the SIFT method might look like this:

Your friend posts an article from a website that you’ve never heard of with a sensational headline. The headline has made you kind of upset, which might mean that the post is meant to push your buttons so you are more likely to push that share button. So you stop.

Then you open Google and search for the website which leads to a Wikipedia article about the organization that wrote the article. Turns out, they have a history of repeating poorly sourced stories.

Then you search for the topic of the article and realize that no reputable news sources have posted about it. Not CBC, CTV, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star… no one.

Finally, you find that the claims in the article all came from a joke video on TikTok – not based on fact at all.

One of the major strengths of the SIFT method is its first step. If you have no time to fact check, simply stopping and not sharing can vastly decrease the proliferation of lies and misleading information online. Information may move fast, but that doesn’t mean we have to.

Learn more

The SIFT Method. (University of Chicago) Last accessed 2024/09/11.

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