Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, "Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas

An indispensable guide for telling fact from fiction on the internet—often in less than 30 seconds.

The internet brings information to our fingertips almost instantly. The result is that we often jump to thinking too fast, without taking a few moments to verify the source before engaging with a claim or viral piece of media. Information literacy expert Mike Caulfield and educational researcher Sam Wineburg are here to enable us to take a moment for due diligence with this informative, approachable guide to the internet.

In Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (U Chicago Press, 2023), you will learn to identify red flags, get quick context, and make better use of common websites like Google and Wikipedia that can help and hinder in equal measure.

This how-to guide will teach you how to use the web to verify the web, quickly and efficiently, including how to

• Verify news stories and other events in as little as thirty seconds (seriously)

• Determine if the article you’re citing is by a reputable scholar or a quack

• Detect the slippery tactics scammers use to make their sites look credible

• Decide in a minute if that shocking video is truly shocking

• Deduce who’s behind a site—even when its ownership is cleverly disguised

• Uncover if that feature story is actually a piece planted by a foreign government

• Use Wikipedia wisely to gain a foothold on new topics and leads for digging deeper

And so much more. Building on techniques like SIFT and lateral reading, Verified will help students and anyone else looking to get a handle on the internet’s endless flood of information through quick, practical, and accessible steps.

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