SIFTing through the Pandemic: Evaluating Online Information: Using Wikipedia to Verify Sites

Experimenting with emerging technologies to broaden your own understanding can be valuable, time-saving, and can help you to connect the dots in ways that you may not have been able to do so on your own.

Google searches, Wikipedia searches, and more can be very useful for quickly locating background information and selecting helpful keywords that you can search library databases with. Please make sure to first discuss parameters laid out by your professor about what you can and cannot use in your research papers. The following examples contain surprising information and how humans are shaping information technologies, and technologies are shaping human knowledge which may make you think differently about the places you commonly visit (or avoid!) looking for quick background information.

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia: Misconceptions & Benefits (Butler, Introduction to College Research)

• Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines

• Wikipedia:Systemic Bias on Wikipedia

 Fact Checking

• Evaluate and investigate the arguments, evidence given to support arguments, opinions, biases, etc. in the sources you encounter

• SIFT Method - Seek verification from multiple, credible sources and trace original sources of evidence

• Stanford History Education Group - How Fact Checkers Evaluate Information Online