MEDIA LITERACY

What do you need to know before

choosing an article
WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN SEARCHING
ONLINE FOR ARTICLES You need to know where your information is coming
Credible sources from. Who is giving you this information, and should we
listen to them?

Is what you’re reading true? Does this information have another

Trustworthiness motive?

When was your information given? Is it outdated? Is there information missing that we
Recency now know?

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 When searching for a
credible article, we
want to make sure
FINDING that we know who is
behind the article
CREDIBLE
and why they wrote
SOURCES it

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WHAT DOES A CREDIBLE SOURCE LOOK LIKE?

• Author and publisher should have a good

record of giving correct information in the
past
• What are the authors credentials?
• The author should be unbiased
• If there are any cited sources, those should be
easy to see and find yourself
• Scholarly peer reviewed articles are often
more credible

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 HOW DO YOU
KNOW YOU
CAN TRUST AN
ARTICLE? While we can’t trust an article to be 100% correct 100%
of the time, we can take steps to give us more confidence
that what we are reading is true
WHAT DOES A
TRUSTWORTHY
ARTICLE LOOK LIKE?
• Look for citations
• Compare the information against
information you know to be true
• Does the article have an author
visible. Do their past articles show
they are trustworthy?
 WHY DOES RECENCY
MATTER?
When we are looking for an article, we want to make
sure that it has been made recently. If we are looking
for information about how may people use social
media we don’t want to look at information from
before social media was around.
HOW TO FIND RECENT INFORMATION

• Try to use articles from the last 5-10

years at the latest.
• If you need information for a certain
timeframe, look at article only in that
time
• If you are looking at a developing
story, see if or when the article is
revised and edited

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WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AN ARTICLE REVIEW

• Make sure the author and publisher are reliable

• Look at the information and compare it to what you know is true

• Make sure your articles are up to date and as recent as possible

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THANK YOU