Rely on established media. Make sure your fact checks are done by using news outlets that are credible. (Mike Caulfield, Washington State University, 2018).

A lot of things you find on the internet have been stripped of context. Maybe there's a video of a fight between two people. But what happened before that? Who started it? What was clipped out of the video and what stayed in? Maybe there's a picture that seems real, but the caption is dubious at best. Maybe a claim is made about a new medical treatment supposedly based on a research paper — but you're not certain if the paper supports it. (Tulsa Community College)

In the last step of the SIFT process, you will trace the claim or evidence back to the primary source (if possible).

Primary, also meaning first, are sources where information originated. Primary sources can be:

- Data from research studies or experiments (helpful for determining if claims using statistics are accurate). (Tulsa Community College)

- Government documents (also helpful for finding data, statistics, laws, legislation, etc). (Tulsa Community)

- Quotes, tweets, or posts from famous people or politicians (helpful for verifying if that screenshot of someone’s Twitter account is real or fabricated). (Tulsa Community)