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Social media has a misinformation problem. Some of this misinformation is malicious in nature, created by all sorts of shady characters trying to sell products, boost political candidates, or simply get more clicks.
But, unfortunately, most of the misinformation out there is actually shared by people like you and me. Yes, that’s right. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t spend a lot of time analyzing the factual content of any story. You probably don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out the hidden biases or viewpoints of the person creating the content. And you probably assume that any story that has already been shared by hundreds, if not thousands, of other people is probably safe for you to share as well, right? Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and that’s where the SIFT method comes into play.
The SIFT method
The four-step SIFT method, created by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield at the University of Washington, is a proven way to cut back on all the misinformation being shared out there. Each letter of “SIFT” stands for a particular step that you can take to avoid being duped by others.
So, for example, “S” stands for “Stop.” As in, stop and take a minute to consider things. We all lead busy lives, and many of us are in a race to publish the best content as soon as possible. And that means our fingers are always on the trigger button, just waiting to hit “send” and have our content sent out into the ether. But the SIFT method says that you should probably dial back some of the immediacy and urgency you are feeling, so that you can make a more informed, rational decision about what to share.
“I” stands for “Investigate.” As best as possible, you should determine the source of a story or article. At the very least, you should attempt to use a neutral source such as Wikipedia to fact-check any claims that appear to be particularly dubious.
“F” stands for “Find better coverage.” It’s all too often the case that a story appears from a source that you’ve never heard of before. And when you try to find other sites also carrying the story, they seem to be a bit scammy. So, before you share what could be misinformation, it’s worth the effort to find other reputable news sources running with the story. Usually, you can do this with Google News.
And, finally, “T” stands for “Trace the claim to its original context.” If you’ve ever played the game of telephone when you were a kid, you probably know how information and content can transform in strange ways, as it makes its way from person to person. The same thing is true in the social media world. Even the best-intentioned social media influencer might mistake or misunderstand something, and that gets immediately passed on to other influencers. So if you go back to the original source document or original source speech, you can often spot the misinformation.
A shared responsibility on social media
Granted, being able to carry out the full SIFT method with everything you see and read on social media is probably going to be exhausting, if not impossible. (Don’t they have paid fact-checkers for that?) But, as a minimum, try using at least one of these four SIFT steps every time you are tempted to share content on social media.
At the end of the day, we all have a shared responsibility to make social media a safe, trusted place. Using the SIFT method, we can do exactly that.
