Evaluating Online Sources

When you're doing research for your assignments, it's important to learn how to check if your sources are reliable. MCC librarians made this guide to help you confidently evaluate websites and other online sources.

These four moves will help you evaluate online sources:

STOP: When you find a new source of information, take a moment to think. Do you feel strongly about it? Is it a website you know and trust? Don't use it or share it until you know more about it, especially if you plan to use it for an assignment. 

INVESTIGATE the source.  Use Google, Wikipedia, or mediafactcheck.com to learn more about the source. What's its reputation? What do others say about it? What biases might they have?

FIND better coverage. Double-check the information using sources you trust. Do they say the same thing? Do they offer different perspectives?

TRACE claims, quotes, and media to their original context.Much of what we read or view online isn't original reporting or research. This means it might contain mistakes or be changed on purpose. To be sure claims are presented correctly, trace the information back to its source.

Once you've confirmed a source's reliability, you can analyze its content more thoroughly.

Modified from Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Confirmation bias is when we naturally look for, remember, and understand information in a way that agrees with what we already believe. We might show this bias by only using search terms or using sources that back up our views.

To combat confirmation bias, we can try to:

• Understand own biases and how these might affect our choice of sources,
• Search for different viewpoints while gathering information, and
• Keep an open mind when we come across different or opposing ideas.