Mike Caulfield

American researcher in digital information literacy. Currently Research Scientist at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public; previously Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University Vancouver (2014–2021), where the textbook Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (2017) was developed and the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims) was articulated. Earlier work was in educational technology and the design of learning environments for community colleges.

Stake§

Caulfield's stake is the practitioner-developer one of someone who needed teachable techniques for a problem the academic literature had identified but not operationalised. The 2017 textbook is a working artefact, not a research monograph: a short, freely distributed book of techniques tested in classrooms and refined against student performance. The techniques were subsequently validated empirically by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew's team at Stanford; the 2019 Teachers College Record paper is the empirical case Caulfield's textbook had been working toward.

The 2017 textbook Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers is the work that matters in this topic. The book is structured around four moves a reader should make when encountering an online claim: check for previous work (see if a fact-checker has already addressed the claim), go upstream to the source (find the original document, study, or statement the claim is based on), read laterally (open additional tabs to find out who the source is and what others have said about them), and circle back (return to the original claim with the context the investigation has produced). The four moves were later condensed into the SIFT mnemonic in subsequent versions.

The textbook's design reflects the construct's commitment to making the techniques teachable in short time. Each chapter is short, illustrated with worked examples of real online claims, and structured around a single move the student is being asked to practise. The freely distributed format was deliberate: the techniques are useful only if they are taught, and the textbook removes the cost barrier that would have prevented adoption in community colleges and high schools where the audience most needed them.

Caulfield's later work has extended the programme into professional development for librarians and information- literacy instructors, and into work with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public on misinformation research. The construct's reach into K-12 and undergraduate information-literacy curricula has been substantial; the SIFT acronym appears in roughly half of contemporary US college library-instruction modules. The empirical validation supplied by Wineburg and McGrew's 2019 study — which showed that professional fact-checkers used lateral reading where students and academic historians used vertical reading, and that the difference predicted accuracy — gave the construct standing in the research community as well.