The internet is full of trolls who create disinformation to provoke and make people upset. Don't fall for their pranks.
Instead, STOP.
Within the first ninety seconds of encountering a piece of media, be it for research or just surfing on social media, (s)top and evaluate it using SIFT (Caulfield & Wineburg, 2023) by asking:
Here's why scholars (s)top before they believe or share what they see.
(S)top is a reminder to stay on task. It's easy to get lost exploring interesting tangents while researching. As soon as you get distracted, (s)top and remember your original goal.
For a paper or project, this means focusing on your research question and finding sources directly related to it.
Let's say you want to find examples of accessible interior design for a class project. While researching, you stumble upon the article, 10 Incredible Dog Houses For Your Best Friend. From here, you can explore more examples of dog house design, or you can (s)top and ask whether this article is really adding anything to your project.
Yes, it's a fun distraction, but you still need to finish your research. By cultivating a habit of checking yourself regularly, you can avoid situations where a fun distraction becomes a lost afternoon.
There are apps that can help you stay focused and on task. Here are a few that we like:
You can also check that you're on task by using the right search terms so that you are only seeing the results that are relevant to your assignment. Determine whether you are using the right search tool for your research. For instance, you may find a lot of interesting sources in a newspaper index, but if you need to use peer-reviewed journal articles for your project, you should search in scholarly databases rather than spending time on sources you won't be able to use, no matter how interesting they seem.
The second part of (s)top is about recognizing emotional responses to sources.
Everyone has a worldview built from their upbringing, life experiences, beliefs, family, friends, generation, religion, etc. Your worldview is like a lens that you use to see and interpret the world.
When presented with new ideas, our worldview helps us determine a course of action. We can:
We are more likely to accept new ideas when they align with our beliefs and ways of thinking. This is called confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias: "The tendency to accept, or agree with, or search for information from sources that confirm what you already believe or think" (Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz, 2022) as opposed to looking "for disconfirming evidence to refute it" (Howard, 2018, p. 59)
Confirmation bias is why we listen to news channels that align with our political beliefs. It is also the reason we armchair research for articles and evidence that support what we think and believe.
AI algorithms know this. It's why, when searching on Amazon for a book, the algorithms give you a "Products related to this item" section to get you to buy more items aligned with your interests and ideas.
Conversely, we are likely to reject new ideas when they challenge or threaten our worldviews and core beliefs. A study by the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California found that when a person is presented with facts and ideas that counter their core beliefs, it can cause a fight-or-flight response as if the person is being physically threatened (Kaplan, Gimbel, & Harris, 2016).
The stronger the perceived threat to one's core beliefs, the stronger the physiological and emotional reaction. The stronger the physiological and emotional reaction, the more likely we will vehemently defend our beliefs and reject the new idea, even in the face of convincing arguments and evidence. This is called the backfire effect (Nyhan, Reifler, Richey, & Freed, 2014).
Backfire effect: The tendency for people to strengthen their preexisting beliefs and worldviews when faced with evidence, facts, and ideas that challenge a core belief.
Media, marketers, and internet trolls use confirmation bias and the backfire effect to get you to click and share their information (and misinformation) with others. A study by University of Pennsylvania marketing professors Dr. Jonah Berger and Dr. Katherine Milkman found that the most viral posts were ones that elicited the strongest reactions of either anger or awe (2012). Clickbait, captivating headlines, and eye-catching social media posts are designed to trigger emotions that override our logical senses so that we share without checking for accuracy (Shaer, 2014; Wendling, 2018).
As a scholar, you don't have the time or energy to fall for these shenanigans.
If a post elicits a strong emotion (whether it's awe or anger), it is even more important for you to (s)top and evaluate. Using SIFT, it may only take seconds for you to make this judgment (Caulfield, 2019).
"The habit is simple. When you feel a strong emotion — happiness, anger, pride, vindication — and that emotion pushes you to share a "fact" with others, STOP.
Above all, these are claims that you must fact-check" (Caulfield, 2017).
Confirmation bias and the backfire effect are two forms of cognitive biases. You'll learn more about how biases affect the academic research process later in this module.
Caulfield, M. (2017). Web literacy for student fact-checkers. https://pressbooks.pub/webliteracy/front-matter/web-strategies-for-student-fact-checkers/ Links to an external site.
Caulfield, M. (2019, June 27). SIFT (The Four Moves). Hapgood. https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/Links to an external site.
Howard, J. (2018). Cognitive errors and diagnostic mistakes: A case-based guide to critical thinking in medicine. Springer Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93224-8
Kaplan, J.T., Gimbel, S.I., and Harris, S. (2016). Neural correlates of maintaining one's political beliefs in the face of counterevidence." Scientific Reports, 6(39589). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39589
Lunsford, A.A., & Ruszkiewicz, J.J. (2022). Everything's an argument (9th ed). Macmillan Learning.
Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S., and Freed, G.L. (2018). Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 133(4), e835-e842. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-2365
Shaer, M. (2014, April). What emotion goes viral the fastest? On Twitter and Facebook, which spreads quickest: joy, sadness or disgust? Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-goes-viral-fastest-180950182/?no-ist
Wendling, M. (2018, January 21). The (almost) complete history of 'fake news.' BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
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