Verified
How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online
9780226822068
9780226829838
9780226829845
Verified
How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online
An indispensable guide for telling fact from fiction on the internet—often in less than 30 seconds.
The internet brings information to our fingertips almost instantly. The result is that we often jump to thinking too fast, without taking a few moments to verify the source before engaging with a claim or viral piece of media. Information literacy expert Mike Caulfield and educational researcher Sam Wineburg are here to enable us to take a moment for due diligence with this informative, approachable guide to the internet. With this illustrated tool kit, you will learn to identify red flags, get quick context, and make better use of common websites like Google and Wikipedia that can help and hinder in equal measure.
This how-to guide will teach you how to use the web to verify the web, quickly and efficiently, including how to
• Verify news stories and other events in as little as thirty seconds (seriously)
• Determine if the article you’re citing is by a reputable scholar or a quack
• Detect the slippery tactics scammers use to make their sites look credible
• Decide in a minute if that shocking video is truly shocking
• Deduce who’s behind a site—even when its ownership is cleverly disguised
• Uncover if that feature story is actually a piece planted by a foreign government
• Use Wikipedia wisely to gain a foothold on new topics and leads for digging deeper
And so much more. Building on techniques like SIFT and lateral reading, Verified will help students and anyone else looking to get a handle on the internet’s endless flood of information through quick, practical, and accessible steps.
For more information, visit the website for the book.
The internet brings information to our fingertips almost instantly. The result is that we often jump to thinking too fast, without taking a few moments to verify the source before engaging with a claim or viral piece of media. Information literacy expert Mike Caulfield and educational researcher Sam Wineburg are here to enable us to take a moment for due diligence with this informative, approachable guide to the internet. With this illustrated tool kit, you will learn to identify red flags, get quick context, and make better use of common websites like Google and Wikipedia that can help and hinder in equal measure.
This how-to guide will teach you how to use the web to verify the web, quickly and efficiently, including how to
• Verify news stories and other events in as little as thirty seconds (seriously)
• Determine if the article you’re citing is by a reputable scholar or a quack
• Detect the slippery tactics scammers use to make their sites look credible
• Decide in a minute if that shocking video is truly shocking
• Deduce who’s behind a site—even when its ownership is cleverly disguised
• Uncover if that feature story is actually a piece planted by a foreign government
• Use Wikipedia wisely to gain a foothold on new topics and leads for digging deeper
And so much more. Building on techniques like SIFT and lateral reading, Verified will help students and anyone else looking to get a handle on the internet’s endless flood of information through quick, practical, and accessible steps.
For more information, visit the website for the book.
280 pages | 100 color plates | 6 x 8 | © 2023
Education: Education--General Studies, Psychology and Learning
Library Science and Publishing: Library Science
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Get Quick Context: It Can Take as Little as Thirty Seconds—Seriously!
The Three Contexts
“Do I Know What I’m Looking At?”
Introducing SIFT
Stop! (Or, How to Fail at Source-Checking Even If You’re the New York Times)
Investigate the Source
Find Better Coverage
Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to Their Original Context
Takeaways
2 Cheap Signals: Or, How Not to Get Duped
Easily Fakeable Questions
Gameable Signals of Credibility
First Impressions Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
URLs Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
What about Dot-Coms?
Going Deeper: The “Org” of Dot-Org Is Big Business
Nonprofit Status: “Nearly Anything Goes”
Numbers That Bamboozle
Links That Lead Astray
Takeaways
3 Google: The Bestie You Thought You Knew
Interpreting and Mining Search Results
Why Seeing on the Internet Isn’t Believing
Decoding Google’s Knowledge Panel
Different Sources, Different Purposes
Going Deeper: What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different Sources
When Featured Snippets Get It Wrong
Going Deeper: Google’s Three Vertical Dots Are a Great Hack for Lateral Reading
Keywords and Inferred Intent: How to Think like Your Search Engine
Keywords: The Underlying Architecture of Search
Inferred Intent: Providing Google with a “Tell”
Google Is a Mirror Reflecting Back What You Give It
A Search Engine, Not a “Truth Engine”
Takeaways
4 Lateral Reading: Using the Web to Read the Web
Get off the Page!
Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-Checker
Why Lateral Reading Works
Little Shift, Big Payoff
Lateral Reading Puts You in Control
Avoid Promiscuous Clicking: Practice Click Restraint
The “Vibe” of the Search Engine Results Page
Takeaways
5 Reading the Room: Benefiting from Expertise When You Have Only a Bit Yourself
Why You Can’t “Just Do the Math”
Reading the Room: Quick Assessment of a Range of Expert Views
Going Deeper: Why We Call This “Reading the Room”
Trust Compression, or How to Avoid Info-Cynicism
Reading the Room on the Mask Issue
The Perils of the Single Academic Contrarian
Going Deeper: What Makes a Good Summary Source?
Takeaways
6 Show Me the Evidence: Why Scholarly Sources Are Better than Promotional Materials, Newsletters, and Random Tweets
What’s Peer Review?
Peer Review: “The Worst Way to Judge Research, Except for All the Others”
The Problem of the Single Study
Literature Reviews: A Bird’s-Eye View of Multiple Studies
Going Deeper: Journals That Prey on Unsuspecting Victims
Real History, Fake History: How to Tell the Difference
Using Google Scholar to Find Scholarly Sources
The Vibe of Google Scholar’s Results Page
Using Google Scholar as a Quick Reputation Check
Takeaways
7 Wikipedia: Not What Your Middle School Teacher Told You
What about the Mistakes?
Going Deeper: Wikipedia to Britannica: “He That Is without Sin . . .”
Anyone Can Change Wikipedia, Can’t They?
Isn’t Wikipedia Biased?
Wikipedia as a Tool for Research
Using Wikipedia to Validate Sources
Going Deeper: Quickly Validating a Reference from a Book
Using Wikipedia for Quick Checks of Unfamiliar Websites
Quick Investigation of a Claim
Quick Checks of an Unfamiliar Academic Source
Using Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”
Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your Research
Going Deeper: Deciphering the Hieroglyphics of a Bibliographical Reference
The Messiness of Making Knowledge
Takeaways
8 Video Games: The Dirty Tricks of Deceptive Video
False Context
Exploiting “Seeing Is Believing”
Going Deeper: Online News Is Often More Credible Than You Think
Falsely Implied Date
Connect My Dots, or Creating a False Sense of “Research”
Deceptively Cropped Video
Takeaways
9 Stealth Advertising: When Ads Masquerade as News
The Problem: Stealth Advertising Works
A Con Is Born
Newspapers Become Ad Agencies
The Problem in Three Words: Conflict of Interest
Disappearing Warning Labels
Sponsored Propaganda
Half Truths Are Not Whole Truths
When Stealth Ads Move to Social Media
Going Deeper: How Stealth Ads Lose Their Warning Labels
Protecting Yourself in an Age of Slimy Advertising
Takeaways
10 Once More with Feeling: Using Your Emotions to Find the Truth
Emotion Doesn’t Know the Truth, But It Knows What You Care About
Going Deeper: Man versus Machine
“Compellingness” Tells Us What’s Important to Check
Surprise Is a Sign Our Assumptions Might Be Wrong
Why Compellingness and Surprise Beat the Checklist
Going Deeper: Mutant Flowers
Feeling Overwhelmed? Rethink Your Approach
Takeaways
11 Conclusion: Critical Ignoring
Postscript: Large Language Models, ChatGPT, and the Future of Verification
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
1 Get Quick Context: It Can Take as Little as Thirty Seconds—Seriously!
The Three Contexts
“Do I Know What I’m Looking At?”
Introducing SIFT
Stop! (Or, How to Fail at Source-Checking Even If You’re the New York Times)
Investigate the Source
Find Better Coverage
Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to Their Original Context
Takeaways
2 Cheap Signals: Or, How Not to Get Duped
Easily Fakeable Questions
Gameable Signals of Credibility
First Impressions Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
URLs Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
What about Dot-Coms?
Going Deeper: The “Org” of Dot-Org Is Big Business
Nonprofit Status: “Nearly Anything Goes”
Numbers That Bamboozle
Links That Lead Astray
Takeaways
3 Google: The Bestie You Thought You Knew
Interpreting and Mining Search Results
Why Seeing on the Internet Isn’t Believing
Decoding Google’s Knowledge Panel
Different Sources, Different Purposes
Going Deeper: What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different Sources
When Featured Snippets Get It Wrong
Going Deeper: Google’s Three Vertical Dots Are a Great Hack for Lateral Reading
Keywords and Inferred Intent: How to Think like Your Search Engine
Keywords: The Underlying Architecture of Search
Inferred Intent: Providing Google with a “Tell”
Google Is a Mirror Reflecting Back What You Give It
A Search Engine, Not a “Truth Engine”
Takeaways
4 Lateral Reading: Using the Web to Read the Web
Get off the Page!
Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-Checker
Why Lateral Reading Works
Little Shift, Big Payoff
Lateral Reading Puts You in Control
Avoid Promiscuous Clicking: Practice Click Restraint
The “Vibe” of the Search Engine Results Page
Takeaways
5 Reading the Room: Benefiting from Expertise When You Have Only a Bit Yourself
Why You Can’t “Just Do the Math”
Reading the Room: Quick Assessment of a Range of Expert Views
Going Deeper: Why We Call This “Reading the Room”
Trust Compression, or How to Avoid Info-Cynicism
Reading the Room on the Mask Issue
The Perils of the Single Academic Contrarian
Going Deeper: What Makes a Good Summary Source?
Takeaways
6 Show Me the Evidence: Why Scholarly Sources Are Better than Promotional Materials, Newsletters, and Random Tweets
What’s Peer Review?
Peer Review: “The Worst Way to Judge Research, Except for All the Others”
The Problem of the Single Study
Literature Reviews: A Bird’s-Eye View of Multiple Studies
Going Deeper: Journals That Prey on Unsuspecting Victims
Real History, Fake History: How to Tell the Difference
Using Google Scholar to Find Scholarly Sources
The Vibe of Google Scholar’s Results Page
Using Google Scholar as a Quick Reputation Check
Takeaways
7 Wikipedia: Not What Your Middle School Teacher Told You
What about the Mistakes?
Going Deeper: Wikipedia to Britannica: “He That Is without Sin . . .”
Anyone Can Change Wikipedia, Can’t They?
Isn’t Wikipedia Biased?
Wikipedia as a Tool for Research
Using Wikipedia to Validate Sources
Going Deeper: Quickly Validating a Reference from a Book
Using Wikipedia for Quick Checks of Unfamiliar Websites
Quick Investigation of a Claim
Quick Checks of an Unfamiliar Academic Source
Using Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”
Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your Research
Going Deeper: Deciphering the Hieroglyphics of a Bibliographical Reference
The Messiness of Making Knowledge
Takeaways
8 Video Games: The Dirty Tricks of Deceptive Video
False Context
Exploiting “Seeing Is Believing”
Going Deeper: Online News Is Often More Credible Than You Think
Falsely Implied Date
Connect My Dots, or Creating a False Sense of “Research”
Deceptively Cropped Video
Takeaways
9 Stealth Advertising: When Ads Masquerade as News
The Problem: Stealth Advertising Works
A Con Is Born
Newspapers Become Ad Agencies
The Problem in Three Words: Conflict of Interest
Disappearing Warning Labels
Sponsored Propaganda
Half Truths Are Not Whole Truths
When Stealth Ads Move to Social Media
Going Deeper: How Stealth Ads Lose Their Warning Labels
Protecting Yourself in an Age of Slimy Advertising
Takeaways
10 Once More with Feeling: Using Your Emotions to Find the Truth
Emotion Doesn’t Know the Truth, But It Knows What You Care About
Going Deeper: Man versus Machine
“Compellingness” Tells Us What’s Important to Check
Surprise Is a Sign Our Assumptions Might Be Wrong
Why Compellingness and Surprise Beat the Checklist
Going Deeper: Mutant Flowers
Feeling Overwhelmed? Rethink Your Approach
Takeaways
11 Conclusion: Critical Ignoring
Postscript: Large Language Models, ChatGPT, and the Future of Verification
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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