Disinformation - Deliberately false information.
Malinformation - Truthful information used to damage or damage by implication. An example might be leaks timed to damage.
Misinformation - Erroneous or incorrect information. Misinformation may not always be deliberate; it's just wrong or mistaken.
Source: Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe.
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SIFT is a method you can use to evaluate information you see in social media, the news, and online to help you differentiate between factual news and misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. This Infographic shows the steps of SIFT: Stop, investigate the source, find trusted coverage, trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.
We'll go more in-depth with each step using the individual links to pages on the upper left-hand side. But for now, here are the steps, with links to the pages. You can use this as a table of contents to navigate through the different steps.
The CRAAP test is an evaluation tool used for many years. Recent criticism questions its effectiveness against evaluating content with misinformation. SIFT is a horizontal search (including lateral reading to find context), while CRAAP is more of a vertical search of a single website.
Source: Blakeslee, S. (2004) "The CRAAP Test," LOEX Quarterly: (31) 3.https://commons.emich.edu/loexquarterly/vol31/iss3/4
Note: The educational content on this page has been adapted from the Check, please! online course. The reuse of this material has been made possible by a Creative Commons license and is free for reuse and revision. See the included note for more information from the original authors.