Evaluating Sources

Understanding how to evaluate sources is a skill sorely lacking in today’s world. There are many factors we could blame: the overwhelming amount of information (good and bad) available at our fingertips, the rise of social media and its ethically dubious use of algorithms to direct our attention, the tribalism of our politics and resulting echo chambers, and less than optimal attempts to educate students on the topic. In this brief series, I will review the key elements you consider as you evaluate sources, including:

1. What is your question and how important is it?
2. What is the source? (e.g., individual, group, organization)
3. What is the source’s expertise?
4. What is the source’s motivation?
5. Checking yourself (and the source) for confirmation bias

If you’re using this series as part of a class, a good activity to start with would be to have students make a list of the different sources of information that they consider in their everyday lives. For example:

1. New sites/news organizations
2. Twitter
3. Stories I find on social media
4. Friends
5. Teachers
6. Family members
7. Religious leaders
8. Community members (e.g., doctors, police, town council)
9. Advertisements/commercials
10. Books/textbooks

Then have them make a list of benefits and drawbacks for each type of source listed. For example, Twitter might be great for breaking news but the fact posts/individuals are “ranked” by popularity means that the most reliable sources may not always rise to the top. This is a great group activity to get students talking — the goal is for them to not just make a general list (like the one above), but to dive deeper with more specific examples of different types. It need not be exhaustive, but the more interesting responses to what is good/bad about this source will be found with concrete examples.

If students are sticking to general ideas, you may be able to prompt more reflection with questions like:

1. What news websites do you trust? Why?
2. What news websites do you not trust? Why?
3. What is the difference between them? Why do you trust the one and not the other?
4. What might make you distrust a story on a site you normally trust? What might make you trust a story on a site you normally distrust?

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