Remember Click Restraint
Click restraint: a regular practice of fact checkers, through which one reviews and analyzes a list of search results before deciding on which links to click.
Click restraint is a recommended technique for reviewing search results. It allows you to step back and scan result titles, source descriptions, and featured sections from the first page results before deciding what source to examine. This helps readers get a fuller picture of the coverage available on that source before venturing down too many “rabbit holes,” and it helps them make better choices about which sources will be the most useful. (For example, web pages from the original source will often be on results pages, but usually won’t give a reader a view of what others say about that source.) Click restraint is a regular practice of fact checkers, who recognize that some sources may not be the most reliable ones and look for trusted coverage.
For a more detailed refresher on Click Restraint, please see the following video:
How to Find Better Information Online: Click Restraint (2:20)
Image credit: "SLOW" by Herr Olsen is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
CC-BY-NC-SA
This guide was created by Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis at Rowan University and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).