This step is where you start to answer the questions you asked yourself at STOP: What type of content is this? Who wrote and published it? Does the information appear to be reliable and appropriate?
Investigating the source does not require in-depth research and analysis. Rather, this step is a quick check into the expertise and agenda of the online content in question.
This involves a method called "lateral reading," which suggests that users "get off the page" to investigate a source through other websites (such as Wikipedia). It only takes about a minute or two, and enables you to learn about what others have written about your source (rather than solely relying on the source itself). Please watch the following short video [2:44] to learn more this effective strategy:
By clicking Control + F on your keyboard (Command + F for Mac) you can search for specific words or phrases within a document or webpage.
This saves you time when searching for keywords during the SIFT process.
Below is a brief video [0:37] on how to carry out Control + F.