CIVIC ONLINE REASONING

Civic online reasoning is being able to identify if the source is credible or not. We have to be aware of the potentially misleading and false claims that are on the internet. There are three questions that we can follow to evaluate information. 

1. Who’s the author of the information? 

2. What’s the evidence?

3. Are there other sources that back up their claims?

Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites and often times misleads students when searching for information. Many articles on Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. However, it can be credible if it is protected from editing and has many different citations from reliable news and academic sources. 

A website that is reliable has high production values and trappings of legitimacy. For example, a reliable website might have .org at the end, a board of directors, a link to academic studies, or a 501(c)(3) status. 

When looking at new sources, you need to be able to identify what is a news story and what is an opinion column. A news source doesn’t display any bias and presents just the facts. An opinion column is someone’s opinion about a topic.

Fake news stories are evident all over social media, so you need to be careful when reading those articles.  Here is a list of the top 10 most viewed fake news articles in 2019. 

One way to evaluate sources is using the C.R.A.P. test. Below you will find an infographic I created about the C.R.A.P. test.