Close Reading

• Make sure that what you’re reading was actually published by the source. Many websites include “sponsored content” or “native advertising” that can be hard to tell from their own content.
• Now check out the date it was published, to make sure that it’s still relevant. (This will be more important in some contexts, such as news stories, than others.) Look to see if there are any corrections or edits noted at the bottom.
• Do some research about the author and anyone cited as a source. (To see whether you can tell if someone claiming to be an “expert” really is one, see the section Finding and Evaluating Science and Health Information.)
• Make sure that it’s intended as a source of factual information rather than opinion. Keep in mind that a fact isn’t necessarily something that’s true, but something that’s “The moon is made of cheese” is a factual statement, though untrue; “the moon is beautiful” is an opinion, though most people would likely agree that it is true.
• You can also look at how the source gets its information across. Does it try to frighten you or make you angry? Does it use emotionally loaded words or images? Some misinformation relies on misrepresenting things that are true, such as describing two real events and implying a nonexistent connection between them.[1] Be skeptical of sources that try to manipulate you by appealing to things you believe instead of trying to make a reasoned argument, or that use insulting language or images to describe people who hold opposing views.[2]

• If you conclude that the information is reliable, ask if the source is telling you the whole story. Open a new tab and see if there are other sources with information on the same topic. (Make sure they’re original sources, and not just sharing information from the same source.) Once you’ve determined if these sources are reliable, see how their information compares to what you’ve found in your original source.
• How a news story is framed may be more important than any specific political bias. Frames, or schemas, are another kind of thinking shortcut, but instead of helping us make decisions, they help us interpret new information (that can influence our decisions, of course). How an issue is framed gives us a shortcut to deciding how to think about it: for instance, the shift in viewing smoking as an individual health issue to seeing it as a public health issue completely changed our society’s sense of how to deal with it.

By leaving out details that might challenge the audience’s worldview, or presenting it in a way that is more easily assimilated – for instance, by addressing drug addiction as a crime story rather than a public health story – framing can also help us avoid questioning what we already believe. More broadly, news coverage is almost always framed through journalistic norms of what is newsworthy. Because part of what makes something newsworthy is that it is unusual, the availability heuristic can make things like car accidents seem less likely than they really are, while unusual and dramatic things like plane crashes may seem more so. In the same way, news coverage typically makes us think the world is more dangerous than it really is because things like violent crime and natural disasters are likely to be seen as newsworthy. (In Canada, this effect is intensified because so much of our media comes from the United States.)

Close reading Wikipedia

As an online research source, Wikipedia is in a class by itself, with kids choosing it as their first (and often only) destination for school research.[3] Articles are written by volunteers from around the world who give their time and expertise to this ambitious project. Anyone and everyone is welcome to write and edit.

The same qualities that make Wikipedia unique also arouse criticism from those who question “How can you trust content that anybody can write or change?” However, Wikipedia does try to control the accuracy of its material by giving users opportunities to challenge information they think may be incorrect or misleading. As well, there are “teams” responsible for ranking and improving articles on different topics and automated tools that almost instantly revert malicious changes.[4] As a result, research has found that, on average, Wikipedia is as or more accurate than other online encyclopedias that aren’t user-created.[5] Every Wikipedia article has a “Notes and references” section (which shows where specific facts cited in the article came from) and a “Sources” section (which provides more general sources of further information on the topic.)

As well, you should recognize indications that a Wikipedia article may not be fully reliable, such as the presence of cleanup banners that show flaws in the article and the rating it has received.

You can see the rating on the Talk page (click on the "Talk" tab at the top of the article). A complete explanation of this rating scale can be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment.  The ratings are based on the evaluation of Wikipedia users, most often those involved in Assessment teams dealing with a particular topic. The Talk page also shows discussions between editors on different issues with the site.

What distinguishes Wikipedia most from other sources is that not only can anyone edit the site, every edit is recorded: clicking on the “View History” tab will show you every change ever made to the article (along with who made it) and will also let you see previous versions. As well as showing you specific edits, looking at this page also lets you see if the article is in the process of major revisions or controversy.

 [1] Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden S. (2021) Inoculation Theory and Misinformation. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

[2] Traberg, C., Morton, T., & van der Linden, S. (2024). Counteracting socially endorsed misinformation through an emotion-fallacy inoculation. advances. in/psychology, 2, e765332.

[3] Kessler, Sarah. “Students Cite YouTube, Google, Wikipedia the Most [INFOGRAPHIC].” Mashable, May 31, 2012. https://mashable.com/2012/05/31/information-literacy-infographic/

[4] Kloc, Joe. “Wikipedia Is Edited by Bots. That's a Good Thing.” Newsweek, February 25, 2014.

[5] Casebourne, I., Davies, C., Fernandes, M., Norman, N. (2012) Assessing the accuracy and quality of Wikipedia entries compared to popular online encyclopaedias: A comparative preliminary study across disciplines in English, Spanish and Arabic. Epic, Brighton, UK. Retrieved from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EPIC_Oxford_report.pdf