Skip to Main Content
Library Logo Kalamazoo Valley Home Library Home Library Search

Voting 101

Evaluating Information

Before trusting any information or news that you see on social media or anywhere else on the web, you should evaluate it for accuracy and bias. One of the best ways to do that is to apply the CRAAP test. CRAAP is an acronym that stands for: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. 

 

For further explanation, see the video from Western University below. 

Nonpartisan Fact Checking Sites

A nonpartisan nonprofit organization that tries to reduce the level of deception and confusion for voters. They monitor the accuracy of politicians in various forms of media. 

Politifact "seeks to present the true facts unaffected by agenda or biases." The journalists biographies are listed on the site. The journalists are careful to avoid sharing any political views, working on campaigns, or making contributions. 

Snopes got it's start debunking urban legends. It often debunks viral memes and other social media content. Snopes provides sources for all of its fact checks and debunks material from all sides of the political spectrum. 

Fact Checker commits itself to nonpartisanship and fairness, transparency of sources, funding and organization, methodology, and to open and honest corrections. 

This site enables qualified scientists to fact check media coverage on climate change. Science Feedback, the organization behind the site is nonpartisan. 

Additional Fact Checking

Click the link above to debunk misinformation about Michigan's voting process. 

Media Bias

This site is a comprehensive media bias resource. It rates sites on bias as well as accuracy. It also offers explanations as to how they reached their conclusions. 

AllSides provides balanced news coverage, media bias ratings, and opportunities for civil dialogue. See their media bias chart below. 

AllSides Media Bias Chart from AllSides.com. Under their websites terms of use: AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ by AllSides.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. These ratings may be used for research or noncommercial purposes with attribution. They may not be used for commercial purposes without the prior written consent of the Company.