“[I]f a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour”, satirist Jonathan Swift said, “it has done its Work.” He was writing about politics in 1710, but things haven’t changed: Modern voters are bombarded with political misinformation designed to mislead and influence. So, how do you spot and flag political misinformation?
It comes down to four words: Stop, Investigate, Find and Trace. The SIFT approach was created by the educator Mike Caulfield to help students in the digital age, but it’s also a great way to evaluate the political topics that you read. There are four simple steps:
- Stop. Don’t repost anything immediately or comment. Pause for a second and consider.
- Investigate the source. Consider where the information is from, why they have posted it, and who benefits from it.
- Find other sources. Any news source loves getting a scoop, but facts spread. If something is credible, other sources will quickly start reporting on it, so look on other sites to see if the same thing is being reported. Many websites also research and analyze just the facts, like Google Factcheck and BellingCat. Also consider the C.R.A.A.P test: consider the currency, relevancy, authority, accuracy, and purpose of the source.
- Trace the source. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, so find the source of the information. If it is an image, use a reverse image search engine like Google images or Yanadex to find if it has been used elsewhere or misattributed. If it is a quote from a speech, type the quote into Google or Bing to see if you can find the video of the original. For a headline or news story, go directly to the source and find the article.
The warning signs are if something fails any of these simple tests. If the source isn’t trustworthy, if nobody else is reporting it, or if the source isn’t available, it could be misinformation posted either as a genuine mistake or a malicious attempt to muddy the political waters.
‘To flood the zone with sh*t’
Either way, if you can’t investigate, find, and trace it, don’t repost it. The strategy of those using misinformation is, to quote one practitioner, “to flood the zone with shit,” to create so much confusing and misleading information that a reader can’t tell the truth from lies and gives up. Posting it, or even commenting on it, just helps to increase the flood we are all dealing with.
Winston Churchill once said, “a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on.” Except he didn’t: As an upper-class Brit, Churchill would have said trousers rather than pants. That quote has been falsely claimed as a Chinese proverb, and assigned to writers from Mark Twain to Churchill, but again, the origin seems to lie with Swift, who said in 1710 that “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.” Try applying the SIFT test to that: investigate this site, find other sources, and trace the original before you hit the comment button or repost.
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