LibGuides: COVID Vaccines: Fact Checking

Fact Checking Strategies: Four Moves and a Habit

Fact checking information is something anyone can do. It does take time, but fact-checking before you share may save you and others a lot of headache later if the fact seems unclear or questionable. While there are many fact-checking strategies you can use, one of our favorites comes from Michael Caufield's Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers. He calls them:

4 Moves and a Habit

Here's how Caufield describes what those moves and a habit look like:

Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
Go upstream to the source: Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
Read laterally: Read laterally.^[1] Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
Circle back: If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

The habit is to check your emotions while checking the facts. If you've ever felt charged up about a specific issue or experience a strong emotional reaction when you read a headline, congratulations, you're a human! We all have biases and worldviews we bring with us to reviewing and evaluating information. Being conscious of those emotions is helpful when fact-checking because it can help us stay focus on what we're really looking for: the facts.

Read the book for more detail and examples on applying these strategies.

Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers by Michael A. Caufield.

Fact checking web sites

AllSides
"We display the day’s top news stories from the Left, Center and Right of the political spectrum — side-by-side so you can decide the truth for yourself."
Center for Public Integrity
"To protect democracy and inspire change using investigative reporting that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests."
Factcheck
"We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding."
Media Bias Fact Check
"is an independent online media outlet. MBFC is dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practices.

MBFC’s aim is to inspire action and a rejection of overtly biased media"
PolitiFact
Launched in 2007 as an election-year project of the Tampa Bay Times. In 2018, the Tampa Bay Times transferred ownership to the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies, so it could be a non-partisan, not-for-profit national news organization.
Snopes
"When misinformation obscures the truth and readers don’t know what to trust, Snopes.com’s fact checking and original, investigative reporting lights the way to evidence-based and contextualized analysis. We always document our sources so readers are empowered to do independent research and make up their own minds."
Vote Smart
"Vote Smart's mission is to provide free, factual, unbiased information on candidates
and elected officials to ALL Americans."

Navigating COVID Conversations with Others

Sometimes vaccine conversations can feel uncomfortable. You may have someone in your life you'd like to discuss vaccine choices with, but you're not sure how to get started. These resources can help you find ways to make those into productive conversations:

COVID Vaccine Ambassador Training: How to Talk to Parents
Johns Hopkins University has developed an ambassador training to help talk with parents about vaccines, and it's free through Coursera.
Community Toolkit for Addressing Health Misinformation
This toolkit was developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help address health misinformation issues.
"How to navigate COVID-19 vaccine misinformation with fellow parents" (Today)
This article provides some tips for having conversations about vaccination and draws on advice from Kate Starbird, of the Center for an Informed Public and , Rupali Limaye at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation & Narratives"
Video by postdoctoral fellow Kolina Koliai at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.