The C.R.A.P test stands for Currency, Relevancy, Authority and Purpose.
Think about the following when you find a website with information you want to use for your assignment:
C - Currency - When was the website information last updated? Is is current information?
R - Relevancy- How relevant is the information to your task? Does it help answer your research questions
A - Authority - Who is the author of the website’s information?
What are their qualifications? Can the author be trusted? Just because someone publishes something on the net does not mean it is factual! Think about this.
P - Purpose - Why does the website exist? Was it created to sell or persuade? Websites with .com at the end of the URL address are more often commercial, profitable organisations with a purpose to sell a product/service or persuade the reader to think a certain way. This doesn't mean ALL .com websites are unreliable - it just means you have to take a closer look at their purpose.
Clickbait is a term used to describe content on the internet with the main purpose to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page. Clickbait articles are not authoritative or reliable, and should be avoided.
Clickbait often has outlandish, unusual and unbelievable headlines, and usually with lots of exclamation marks. It also often includes headlines with statements such as "Click to find out what happens next" or "You won't believe what happened", and so on.
Example headlines of clickbait:
Website addresses that end with the following are more reliable websites:
.org (non-profit organisations)
.edu (educational organisations)
.gov (government-based organisations)
The above are non-profitable, educational and/or government institutions without an agenda or bias when presenting information. This does not mean that websites ending with .com (commercial) are all unreliable - it just means a little more investigation is required when evaluating these websites, to ensure they are not trying to sell something or push their own agenda or ideas.
'Fake News' is information that is not true, or not real. It can be defined in a number of ways:
Disinformation - information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organisation or country
Misinformation - information that is false but was not created with the intention of causing harm
Mal-information - information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, social group, organisation or country.
Evaluate the following websites against the C.R.A.P criteria.
Is the website an authoritative source of information?