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JOUR 1000: Journalism and Democracy

Is Your Source Credible?

The S.I.F.T. Method

STOP

  • Do you know the website or the source of the information?
  • What is the reputation of the claim, the author, or the website?
  • Don't know any of these? Use the next steps to get more information.

INVESTIGATE

  • What does the web say about the source? (Wikipedia is a great start.)
  • Don't trust what the source says about itself.

FIND trusted coverage

  • Look for trusted coverage about the CLAIM the source is making, not the source itself.
  • Understand the history and context of the claim
  • Seek out those with relevant expertise and a trusted reputation

TRACE back to the original material

  • Find the quote, media, or claim in its original context.
  • Was the version you saw or read represented accurately?
  • Find a high quality or highly respected secondary source if you can't find the original.

Source: Mike Caulfield, Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University Vancouver. 

Are AI Tools Credible?

There are several issues with AI sources' credibility. These include:

  • Hallucinations: Generative AI has a tendency to create sources of information that do not actually exist. If you ask AI to write an annotated bibliography or paper for you, it will likely generate fake citations that look real. See an example of a fake citation from an annotated bibliography generated by ChatGPT below. 
  • Unclear sources: Generative AI is trained on a variety of materials, like books, papers, and web content, and then uses these materials to generate responses. However, the response will not tell you what material it was trained on. This means that AI hides its information sources, making it difficult to determine their credibility.
     
  • Bias: AI is biased according to the materials it was trained on and the choices made by the AI's creators. Consider what company or organization created the AI tool, and what their purpose was in creating and disseminating it, in order to evaluate any potential biases.