Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers

by Mike Caulfield

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The web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and the most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented. But if we haven't taught our students those capabilities is it any surprise that propaganda is winning? This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly.

Description from LibreTexts.

Publisher
Washington State University Vancouver
Subjects
Humanities, Research and Information Literacy
Licence
CC BY, as LibreTexts states it
Who can read
Teens profiles and older, judged from its title and subjects

Contents

LibreTexts writes equations in TeX, and here they show as TeX; the PDF has them typeset.

  1. Front Matter
  2. TitlePage
  3. InfoPage
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Licensing
  6. 1: Four Strategies and a Habit
  7. 1.1: Why This Book?
  8. 1.2: Four Strategies
  9. 1.3: Building a Fact-Checking Habit by Checking Your Emotions
  10. 2: Look for Previous Work
  11. 2.1: How to Use Previous Work
  12. 2.2: Fact-checking Sites
  13. 2.3: Wikipedia
  14. 3: Go Upstream
  15. 3.1: Go Upstream to Find the Source
  16. 3.2: Identifying Sponsored Content
  17. 3.3: Activity- Spot Sponsored Content
  18. 3.4: Understanding Syndication
  19. 3.5: Tracking the Source of Viral Content
  20. 3.6: Tracking the Source of Viral Photos
  21. 3.7: Using Google Reverse Image Search
  22. 3.8: Filtering by Time and Place to Find the Original
  23. 3.9: Activity- Trace Viral Photos Upstream
  24. 4: Read Laterally
  25. 4.1: Choosing Your Experts First
  26. 4.2: Evaluating News Sources
  27. 4.3: National Newspapers of Record
  28. 4.4: Activity- Expert or Crank?
  29. 4.5: Activity- Find Top Authorities for a Subject
  30. 4.6: What "Reading Laterally" Means
  31. 4.7: Evaluating a Website or Publication's Authority
  32. 4.8: Basic Techniques- Domain Searches, WHOIS
  33. 4.9: Activity- Evaluate a Site
  34. 4.10: Stupid Journal Tricks
  35. 4.11: Finding a Journal's Impact Factor
  36. 4.12: Using Google Scholar to Check Author Expertise
  37. 4.13: How to Think About Research
  38. 4.14: Finding High Quality Secondary Sources
  39. 5: Field Guide
  40. 5.1: Verifying Twitter Identity
  41. 5.2: Activity- Verify a Twitter Account
  42. 5.3: Using the Wayback Machine to Check for Page Changes
  43. 5.4: Finding Out When a Page Was Published Using Google
  44. 5.5: Using Google Books to Track Down Quotes
  45. 5.6: Searching TV Transcripts with the Internet Archive
  46. 5.7: Using Buzzsumo To Find Highly Viral Stories
  47. 6: Field Guide (Unfinished Articles)
  48. 6.1: Unfinished Articles
  49. 6.2: Finding Out Who Owns a Server
  50. 6.3: Finding Out When a Site Was Launched
  51. 6.4: Avoiding Confirmation Bias In Searches
  52. 6.5: Finding the Best Possible Opposition
  53. 6.6: Advanced Wikipedia
  54. 6.7: Promoted Tweets
  55. Back Matter
  56. Index
  57. Index
  58. Glossary
  59. Detailed Licensing