On the Book Front:

The search
for credible information

The following column was written by Southern Tier Library System Assistant Director Erika Jenns and Karin Thomas, Director of the Dutton S. Peterson Memorial Library, located at 106 First St. in Odessa.

News and information surround us, especially on social media, where content is delivered rapidly, urgently, and often designed to provoke strong emotional reactions. Posts that evoke a strong reaction or have a sense of urgency are often disinformation or misinformation.

What are dis- and mis- information? Disinformation refers to misleading, incorrect, or false information presented deliberately, with the intent to mislead an audience. Disinformation is sometimes called "fake news." Misinformation refers to misleading, incorrect, or false information shared regardless of intent to mislead an audience.

While humans are often the creators of these types of content, artificial intelligence (AI) also perpetuates the spread of misinformation and disinformation, and in some cases, can even create it through AI hallucinations. AI hallucinations are the result of an AI model generating content or results that appear confident and plausible, but are entirely fabricated or contain outright false information. These hallucinations often include fake facts and even fake citations.

One place information seekers are particularly vulnerable to these hallucinations is through Google’s AI Overview feature, introduced in May 2024. This feature presents an AI-generated summary at the top of some search results. These summaries are pulled from sources across the web, and results are presented in an easily digestible format, without requiring the searcher to do any further clicking or investigation. The problem? These AI-generated summaries often contain AI hallucinations.

To avoid being duped by AI hallucinations, it is recommended that information seekers either entirely ignore the AI Overview presented in Google search results, or skim the information and take additional steps to confirm the accuracy.

To help distinguish credible information from misinformation, disinformation, and AI hallucinations, the following four-step process, also known as the SIFT Method, can be a helpful tool.

Step 1: S - Stop

Before you read, like, or share an article or link, stop. Don’t share. Don’t comment. Be aware of your emotional response to the headline or information presented. Often, these articles and links are created specifically to cause an urgent and emotional response.

Step 2: I - Investigate

Look into the source of the content, any citations, and the author. What is their authority and purpose? Do they have vested interests that may be economically or politically biased? Would you trust this source if you disagreed with it? We tend to believe what aligns with our current or established beliefs.

Step 3: F - Find Better Coverage

See if you can find other trusted sources that might corroborate or dispute the information. The goal is to see if credible sources report and verify the same information.

Step 4: T - Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to their Original Context

Some information is taken out of context to support an agenda or bias, and there are several ways to trace the source, such as:

--Open the original reporting sources listed in the biography, if present. Wikipedia is often used as a first step in fact checking. It’s not perfect, but it often cites sources and bibliography to help further your research.

--Take a screenshot of the image or video. Conduct a reverse image search by putting the screenshot into the Google image search to find the original source.

--Other fact-checking resources include: Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Reuters Fact Check, and MediaWise.

Your local library is always available and happy to help you SIFT! We have trusted resources available to you for FREE to assist with this process:

--GroundNews, (https://stls.overdrive.com/extras/ground-news); a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms.

--Opposing Viewpoints in Context, (https://go.gale.com/ps/start.do?p=OVIC&u=nysl_ca_dmvacces&sid=geolinks); a database that is continuously updating information and opinions on hot issues.

--Gale General Onefile, (https://go.gale.com/ps/start.do?p=ITOF&u=nysl_ca_dmvacces&sid=geolinks); a database with access to magazine, news, and journal articles on general interest topics and current events.

The SIFT Method was pioneered by digital literacy expert, Mike Caulfield, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.