Collins Memorial Library: CCS 151: "Just Asking Questions" :The Power, Psychology, and Politics of Fake News and Conspiracy Theories: Getting Started

Types of Sources: Popular and Scholarly

Scholarly sources present sophisticated, researched arguments using both primary and secondary sources and are written by experts. Journals are examples of scholarly sources.

Popular sources aim to inform or entertain and are intended for a general, non-specialized audience. In academic writing, popular sources most often are analyzed as primary sources. Magazines are examples of popular sources.

To determine the difference between these two types of sources, ask yourself:

Who reads them?
Who writes them?
Who decides what get published in them?
What's in them?
What do they look like?
When are they available?
What can you use them for?

Fact Checking Sites

FactCheck.Org
From the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the mission of the site is to be a “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding."
Politifact.com
PolitiFact is a nonpartisan fact-checking website to sort out the truth in American politics. Originally created by the Tampa Bay Times in 2007. In 2018, PolitiFact was acquired by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists. "Fact-checking journalism is the heart of PolitiFact. Our core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. The reason we publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy."
Snopes.com
When misinformation obscures the truth and readers don’t know what to trust, Snopes.com’s fact checking and original, investigative reporting lights the way to evidence-based and contextualized analysis. We always document our sources so readers are empowered to do independent research and make up their own minds.