SIFT
The Four Moves: Stop, Investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace the original context.

SIFT Method
Investigate the source

The idea here is that you want to know what you’re reading before you read it.

Now, you don’t have to do a Pulitzer prize-winning investigation into a source before you engage with it. But if you’re reading a piece on economics by a Nobel prize-winning economist, you should know that before you read it. Conversely, if you’re watching a video on the many benefits of milk consumption that was put out by the dairy industry, you want to know that as well.

This doesn’t mean the Nobel economist will always be right and that the dairy industry can’t be trusted. But knowing the expertise and agenda of the source is crucial to your interpretation of what they say. Taking sixty seconds to figure out where media is from before reading will help you decide if it is worth your time, and if it is, help you to better understand its significance and trustworthiness.

When investigating a source, fact-checkers read “laterally” across many websites, rather than digging deep (reading “vertically”) into the one source they are evaluating. That is, they don’t spend much time on the source itself, but instead, they quickly get off the page and see what others have said about the source. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the source they’re investigating.

The Wikipedia Trick

You can use the "Wikipedia Trick" to investigate a source on the web.

Please note, you are not using Wikipedia for information to cite on a research paper. You are simply using Wikipedia as a tool to check the credibility and trustworthiness of the content in question.

Two questions to keep in mind after you "Just add Wikipedia"

Is the site or organization I am researching what I thought it was?
If not, does it make it more or less trustworthy?

Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver. SIFT (The Four Moves). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Creative Commons License
CTRL-F, Mike Caulfield, Youtube, "Check the Source"