Below you'll find guides to evaluating sources, web sites and a list of general web sites deemed credible for most academic assignments.

Evaluating Web Sites | Sites that Measure Bias | List of Credible Sources

Examine these three things to determine the authority of the source:

1. Credentials of the writers (What special training have they had? What in their work experience prepares them to write this source?).
2. Where the essay appeared/who published the book/information?
3. Sources and the facts/arguments in the essay (Range of sources used by the author? Obvious logical flaws?).

For a more detailed discussion of evaluating sources, read this Handout on Media Literacy by the Media Literacy Project. In just sixteen page, it's an entire course's worth of information on media manipulation. Read to learn the delicate difference between awareness and apathy. Amazingly good.

See also the Evaluating Sources section in our composition handbook for additional detail.

Evaluating Web Sites

First, a cautionary quote.

Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical species known as the "Pacific Northwest tree octopus." Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source (Motoko).

While the tree octopus site looks dated, there are many other hoax sites that can fool the unsuspecting reader. But the real problem isn't outright hoaxes, it's sites that offer selective, biased or made up stories.

For suggestions on evaluating web sites, see the links below.

• Website evaluation workshop (http://www.icyousee.org/think/frack.html)
• Evaluating web site video: Hartness Library

Sites that Measure Bias

Venturing out on your own?  Interested in checking the bias in your own media consumption? Start with these two sites which have garnered some attention for their ability to measure the bias of a wide variety of publications.  An important caveat?  While they make their methodology clear, they are based on an individual's perception.  What's interesting is that although the two sites have no connections, their categorizations of sites are very similar -- which lends a measure of credibility to their conclusions.

• All Generalizations Are False (http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/), a regularly updated blog that categorizes major media sites into a chart for quick reference (link is to Feb. 5, 2018 iteration http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/chart-3-1-minor-updates-based-constructive-feedback/). For an earlier version of the chart along with a detailed description of its methodology, see this November 8, 2017 post from the same site (http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading/).
• Media Bias/Fact Check (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/) ranks over 2500 sites in a spectrum from Right Bias to Left Bias -- and throws some extra categories as well: Pro-Science; Conspiracy/Pseudoscience; Questionable Sources.  You can use the Search function to find your favorite media site.  Don't have one? See below. 

And yes, while it's almost impossible to avoid bias, that doesn't mean all bias in the same: there is a wide range on the bias meter from "most academics wouldn't trust information from this site with a ten-foot pole" to "most academics would trust information from this site."  

Why do most academics trust some information and discard others?  This excerpt on what Jonathan Rausch calls our "Epistemic Constitution" is an answer and is an excellent example the academic mind at work (and see bottom of page for a note on the wording of his title).  

List of Credible Sources

• Media Sources: sites for credible information: if you hit a pay wall (as usual for information worth considering), you can usually access these sources through our databases.  Just search for the name in Academic Search Premier.
  • The New York Times -- use database in our Library site for free access (https://mobile.nytimes.com/) -
  • The Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com)
  • Snopes (https://www.snopes.com/): internet rumor you'd like to fact check? Snopes is a good place to start.
  • Pew Research Center: credible and authoritative site for polls on a variety of issues. Click on the "Topic Index" tab at the top of the page for a breakdown of the different polls (Direct link to Topic Index (http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/)).
    • Pew Research on American Values (http://www.pewresearch.org/) (Nov. 2011)
  • American Conservative magazine (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/)
  • The Nation magazine (http://thenation.com)
  • Scientific America: great for browsing on general science (https://www.scientificamerican.com/)
  • Radiolab podcasts (http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/)-- Everything from how people react to violence to how they react to love, explained, scientifically.

Work Cited

Rich, Motoko. "Literacy Debate: Online, R U really Reading?" New York Times, Jul 27, 2008, Proquest, accessed 19 August 2016. 

Notes

* Epistemic - "of or relating to knowledge" according to good ole Merriam.  By extension, it involves thinking.  Constitution here means our mental make up -- what constitutes/frames our mental being. While it sounds like a mouthful, "Epistemic Constitution" are two words that condense at least three sentences of explanation.  Kudos to Rausch.