About

Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Educated at Brown and Berkeley, he holds a doctorate in Psychological Studies in Education from Stanford and an honorary doctorate from Sweden's Umeå University. In 2002, Wineburg founded the Stanford History Education Group, whose curriculum and assessments have been downloaded over 16 million times, making it one of the largest providers of free curriculum in the world. His research since 2016 has focused on how people judge the credibility of digital content, a topic that has been widely reported in major media outlets and translated into dozens of languages. His articles and commentaries have appeared in various publications, including Cognitive Science, Journal of American History, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. He authored the book 'Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past,' which won the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. In 2013, he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission and spent four months lecturing across India. His work on digital literacy was honored by UNESCO's 'Global Media and Information' award in 2020. His latest book, co-authored with Mike Caulfield, is 'Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online.'

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Pedagogy
• Cognitive psychology
• Demography
• World Wide Web
• Internet privacy
• Mathematics education
• Geography
• Public relations

Selected publications

• From Scrolling to Scrutiny: Incorporating Online Source Evaluation into an Introductory University Course

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024-05-13 · 158 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distinguishing Credible from Sham: Supporting Young People to Navigate Online

  2024-12-05

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Teenagers in the United States spend over 8 hours on digital devices outside of schoolwork each day (Rideout et al. The Common Sense census: media use by tweens and teens. Common Sense Media, 2021), where they encounter information that ranges from educational to toxic. Despite their fluency with digital devices, young people struggle to evaluate the information that streams across their screens. There are evidence-based approaches for helping students to become more discerning consumers of digital content. Based on research with professional fact checkers, these interventions have been proven across a range of contexts to help people learn effective evaluation strategies. Unfortunately, outdated educational approaches to digital literacy remain widely used. As states across the country adopt legislation mandating media literacy instruction, a series of research questions deserve attention: (1) How can adults be supported to learn and teach digital literacy? (2) How do schools integrate digital literacy into the curriculum? (3) How do young people’s beliefs and identities influence their evaluations? (4) How do we reach people outside of school settings and how can trusted messengers (e.g., parents, health professionals, and community leaders) provide instruction about evidence-based strategies for evaluating online information?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Art of Critical Ignoring

  The Science Teacher · 2024-09-02 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• When critical thinking isn’t enough: to beat information overload, we need to learn ‘critical ignoring’

  2023-02-02

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens

  Current Directions in Psychological Science · 2022 · 136 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Psychology

  -choosing what to ignore and where to invest one's limited attentional capacities. We review three types of cognitive strategies for implementing critical ignoring: self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations by removing them from one's digital environments; lateral reading, in which one vets information by leaving the source and verifying its credibility elsewhere online; and the do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, which advises one to not reward malicious actors with attention. We argue that these strategies implementing critical ignoring should be part of school curricula on digital information literacy. Teaching the competence of critical ignoring requires a paradigm shift in educators' thinking, from a sole focus on the power and promise of paying close attention to an additional emphasis on the power of ignoring. Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today's attention economy.

  PublisherDOI

• Civic Preparation for the Digital Age: How College Students Evaluate Online Sources About Social and Political Issues

  The Journal of Higher Education · 2022-06-15 · 35 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  The ability to find credible information online is necessary for informed civic engagement in the 21st century. This need is particularly acute for young people, who often turn to the Internet to learn about social and political issues. Preparing students to evaluate online content, particularly as it concerns social and political issues, aligns with broader efforts to reinvigorate the civic mission of colleges and universities. We analyzed how college students (n= 263) evaluated online sources about public policy issues. Results showed that a majority employed ineffective strategies for evaluating digital information. Many of the strategies students used mirrored advice found on college and university websites. These findings suggest a need to reconsider post-secondary approaches to teaching online evaluation strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 9 The Psychological Study of Historical Consciousness

  Berghahn Books · 2022-10-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Toolbox of Interventions Against Online Misinformation

  2022-12-16 · 54 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. One approach to mitigating the impact of misinformation focuses on individual-level interventions, equipping the public and policy-makers with essential tools to curb the spread and influence of falsehoods. Here we introduce a toolbox of individual-focused interventions aimed at reducing harm from online misinformation. Comprising an up-to-date account of the interventions featured in 81 scientific papers from across the globe, the toolbox is a resource for scientists, policymakers, and the public. It provides both a conceptual overview of the breadth of interventions---including their target, scope, and examples---and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions---including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The toolbox covers nine categories of interventions: accuracy prompts, debunking and rebuttals, friction, inoculation, lateral reading and verification strategies, media-literacy tips, social norms, source-credibility labels, and warning and fact-checking labels.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lateral reading on the open Internet: A district-wide field study in high school government classes.

  Journal of Educational Psychology · 2022 · 152 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joel Breakstone

  18 shared

• Mark D. Smith

  Stanford University

  13 shared

• Sarah McGrew

  University of Maryland, College Park

  10 shared

• Stephan Lewandowsky

  University of Bristol

  8 shared

• Teresa Ortega

  University of California, Davis

  8 shared

• Chauncey Monte‐Sano

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  7 shared

• Daisy Martin

  Arrowhead Regional Medical Center

  7 shared

• Suzanne M. Wilson

  Virginia Department of Health

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychological Studies in Education

  Stanford University

• Other

  Umeå University

• B.A.

  Brown University

• B.A.

  University of California, Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Coll…
• Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Co…
• UNESCO's 'Global Media and Information' award (2020)