Six Consumer Questions¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 3 studies (3 causal), q2–q3 · 0 of 3 report an effect size

Description¶

A set of six questions designed to help evaluate the trustworthiness of a news story: who made it, how it was made, why it was made, when it was made, what is missing, and where to go from here. The questions convert an intuitive "does this feel credible?" judgment into a structured inquiry routine that directs attention to source, purpose, and evidence rather than surface features like professional design or confident tone.

Design Implications¶

Structured evaluation routines improve students' ability to judge online information compared with unguided instruction or checklists alone Civic online reasoning instruction improves students' evaluation of sources. [+S]. The questions work because they shift evaluation away from superficial cues — which both novices and experts misread — and toward investigating the producer and purpose of a story. They function as a scaffold: with repeated use, the questions become an internalized habit of mind rather than a worksheet.

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Access to authentic news stories, including questionable or biased ones (sanitized examples reduce transfer)
• Background knowledge of news production: sourcing, editorial process, advertising, native advertising, and press-release recycling
• Time for guided practice with feedback, not just a one-time presentation of the questions
• A way to record and compare answers across stories (Annotating or a graphic organizer)

Constraints¶

• Learners without prior knowledge of media institutions cannot answer "who made this?" meaningfully — the questions presuppose background knowledge that must be built first [~M]
• Applied one story at a time in isolation, the routine does not transfer; students need multiple contrasting cases before evaluation generalizes [~S]
• The questions can devolve into a box-checking exercise when used as a compliance worksheet rather than a genuine inquiry
• Less effective for evaluating visual misinformation (doctored images, manipulated video), where the questions address provenance but not image forensics

Implementation Variability¶

• Full routine vs. triage: use all six questions for deep analysis, or the first three (who/how/why) as a quick triage filter
• Lateral adaptation: pair "who made it?" with leaving the page to investigate the source — lateral reading outperforms staying on the page [~S]
• Age adaptation: younger learners use simplified wording ("Who wrote this? Are they trying to sell me something?"); older students apply the questions to primary documents and social media posts, not just articles

Target Learners¶

• Secondary and post-secondary students encountering news and social media content independently Civic online reasoning instruction improves students' evaluation of sources. [+S]
• Adults in media literacy and library information-literacy instruction
• Weakest fit for learners who already have strong evaluation habits, for whom the routine adds little beyond speed

Target Learning Goals¶

• Evaluating credibility of sources and claims
• Identifying purpose, perspective, and omission in media messages
• Transferable critical reading habits applicable to any information source

Instructions¶

1. Select an authentic story with a genuine provenance question — a syndicated piece, a partisan site, or a sponsored post (Case Studies)
2. Ask "Who made this?" — identify the author, outlet, and funding; leave the page to investigate the source rather than judging it in place
3. Ask "How was it made?" — trace sourcing: named experts, documents, aggregation, or unattributed claims
4. Ask "Why was it made?" — distinguish informing, persuading, selling, and entertaining
5. Ask "When was it made?" — check date, timeliness, and whether old news is recirculated as new
6. Ask "What is missing?" — identify absent perspectives, counter-evidence, and context
7. Ask "Where to go from here?" — decide what to do: verify elsewhere, share, discard, or seek a better source
8. Debrief across stories — compare answers on two contrasting stories so learners see how the questions discriminate (Class Discussion)

Related Strategies¶

• Lateral Reading — the investigative move that answers "who made this?" by leaving the page
• Civic Online Reasoning — the broader curriculum family this strategy belongs to

Examples¶

• Newseum (NewseumED) — published the six questions as part of its "E.S.C.A.P.E. Junk News" classroom resources for evaluating news stories (https://newseumed.org)
• Stanford History Education Group, Civic Online Reasoning curriculum — free lessons and assessments in which students evaluate live web sources; field-tested in classrooms (https://cor.stanford.edu)
• News Literacy Project, Checkology — platform lessons on sourcing, bias, and misinformation that operationalize similar evaluation questions (https://checkology.org)

Key Sources¶

• Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021). Students' civic online reasoning: A national portrait. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 505-515. doi:10.3102/0013189x211017495
• Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11), 1–40. doi:10.1177/016146811912101102
• McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165-193. doi:10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320
• Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and media literacy: A plan of action. The Aspen Institute.