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1. Check your emotions 😕😢😠

We do a bad job of evaluating information when we feel strong emotions.

Does a headline make you anxious? angry? shocked? skeptical? Regardless of how you feel, notice strong emotions and proceed with caution.

2. Check the source 📰

Just because a website looks trustworthy, that doesn't mean it is. The URL, about page, and general look of the website are not reliable indicators of website quality and truthfulness.

Look up the website or organization on your favorite search engine. If it has a Wikipedia article, that's a good place to look.

Who funds the website? What are their goals? What are their biases?

3. Check the information 📊

• Read the article, not just the headline

• If the article is reporting on research findings, try to find the original paper.

• If the article doesn't cite the original paper (give author names, a journal title, etc.) that's a red flag. 🚩

• Look for other articles on websites you trust about this information. Do they agree?

• Look up extraordinary claims on a fact-checking site such as Snopes.

4. Share responsibly 🤐

Don't share information from websites you don't trust.

Think before engaging with potentially misleading posts on social media. Algorithms value engagement, whether positive or negative. More engagement means more people will see the misleading headline.