Media Literacy Challenge #2: Corroboration

The Nomadic Blog

Notes and reflections on history and education

Nate Noorlander
February 10, 2026

This post is part of The Nomadic Professor’s 2026 Media Literacy Challenge: Read Smarter Online! Twice a month throughout 2026, America’s 250th anniversary year, we’re sharing one small skill to help you read better online—social media, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, forums, magazines, journals, newspapers, and everything between. Follow along or join and enter the drawing to win free courses or Amazon gift cards—including a grand prize of lifetime access to all Nomadic Professor courses, or a $500 Amazon gift card. Learn more here.

Media Literacy Challenge 2026 – Skill #2: Corroboration

In 1983 Stanislav Petrov’s decision to “corroborate” the information his computer was giving him may have averted nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Petrov was the lieutenant colonel on duty at a Soviet command center responsible for monitoring Soviet early-warning satellites. When his computer told him the U.S. had just launched 5 intercontinental ballistic missiles that would make landfall in under 25 minutes, he had almost no time to react carefully.

He decided to report the alert as a false alarm, which he later described as a “gut decision,” with no better than a 50/50 chance of being right.

So what informed Petrov’s decision? He corroborated, or verified, the information he was getting from one source with information from other sources. One, his training said that five missiles was too few for an actual nuclear attack. And two, Soviet ground-based radar installations, that should have picked up the attack a few minutes after his satellite systems, were not reporting the same incoming missiles.

Petrov’s reliance on this fundamental process of comparing claims and judging between them may have prevented a Soviet nuclear response and an actual American-Soviet nuclear war.

So go out right now and find a live piece of information that you can tell is supposed alarm you, enrage you, tug at your heartstrings, push you onto the bandwagon, or otherwise motivate you to react in the moment, think of Petrov, and corroborate what you’re seeing across a range of sources—then come back and tell us what sources you found and how they corroborated or contradicted each other.

More often than not this will help you learn what sources to trust, will help you be accurate and fair more of the time, and will helpfully temper your initial reactions with a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Talk soon!

Definitions

corroborate

to compare the claims, interpretations, and/or evidence of your source against the claims, interpretations, and/or evidence of other sources, in order to see whether they confirm or contradict each other; to verify

Downloadables:

Starter kit

Links:

A range of links about Petrov and the 1983 crisis moment

Find all challenge key terms on Quizlet (the number of flashcards will increase as the challenge progresses!)

12 Responses

Patrick Ped says:

February 10, 2026 at 6:23 pm

Living in the Federated States of Micronesia, in what is now known as the “Indo-Pacific”, there have been several articles reporting on the growing Chinese threat in the Pacific. A recent article stated that an airfield on one of the outer islands of Woleai, built with Chinese assistance, is an inroad to dominance of Micronesia. It seems like China is really advancing, but other articles are reporting that the Chinese assistance is only the contractor, and that the funding was provided by the FSM National Government. Also, the FSM has had diplomatic relations with China (People’s Republic of China) since 1989 and there is even a resident Diplomatic mission here. I personally have not seen any Chinese dominance whatsoever in this country. Sure, there are some infrastructure projects built by CHinese, but the largest is Japanese funded, while the US funded infrastructure projects surpass both Chinese and Japanese.

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Hyrum Petersen says:

February 11, 2026 at 10:08 am

Corroboration is very helpful, you could go onto Wikipedia for health information, or you could go to the World Health Organization, and since anyone can put anything on Wikipedia, you could end up making mistakes with your health. The trick to make it work properly is to find those trusted sources, and which sources to take with a grain of salt (sometimes more like a bag full of salt 😉 ).

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Nicole says:

February 11, 2026 at 11:55 am

Corroboration is a great skill to use now because I feel like with social media it is so easy to feel strong emotion come with each post or scroll. Taking the time to corroborate gives everything time and space.

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Brenna says:

February 12, 2026 at 9:49 am

I used this recently when my social media had something about a local athlete. It was a source I wasn’t familiar with, so I checked other more trusted sources. I didn’t see anything, so assumed it was false. The next day, however, it was being reported on multiple more credible sites.

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Emily D. says:

February 12, 2026 at 8:03 pm

I clicked an article from a daily news email I subscribe to and was sent to their source article published by a large media outlet about the Michigan child and father taken by ICE. Obviously the article wished to enrage me over the treatment of this child, his family and illegals in general. Lo and behold the ICE personal involved in the incident had a very different story. I confess, I am still searching for clearer facts, but it is obvious from what I have read, everyone has an angle and the facts are second fiddle.

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Camille P says:

February 13, 2026 at 10:14 am

I believe this concept lends itself well to a historian perspective. Finding original sources, creating your own impressions rather than relying on the impressions of others, as reported, allows you to have a better perspective. I have found myself standing corrected when I corroborate my sources and go back to find something I claimed I remembered to be inaccurate.

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Wanda Wilson says:

February 22, 2026 at 9:04 pm

A friend told me that per Facebook, ICE had made arrests within walking distance of where I live. I don’t go on Facebook, so she read it to me. It was definitely written in a manner to engage the emotions. Others living nearby had not heard anything about it. A few days later the local newspaper had an article in which they had interviewed Chiefs of Police in the local and surrounding towns, the County Sheriff, and other local law enforcement agencies. The article was about how/if they interact with ICE, and departmental policies regarding interactions with federal law enforcement. In the article the local Chief of Police commented on the ICE activities within walking distance of where I live. The Chief gave the date, time, place, and details of the situation. I considered this to be a trustworthy source, particularly as neither the reporter nor any of the law enforcement personnel stated any opinions. The reporter reported. The law enforcement officers stated department policy, backed that up with how long the policies had been in effect, and how the department carried out the policy in practice.

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Courtney Collins says:

February 26, 2026 at 8:18 am

A few weeks ago an acquaintance reshared the social media post that claimed Michelle Obama was “anti-white.” The post’s claims seemed unlikely to me so I went looking for the original source of her comments and of course found that they were taken out of context to make the inflammatory post. Just this morning I saw a post about a new Supreme Court ruling regarding intentionally undelivered mail. It also seemed designed to stir me up so I looked it up and found a scotusblog.com post that essentially verified the social media post. The social media post perhaps exaggerated some possible repercussions of the ruling but its facts were basically sound. So two different posts, two outcomes of my corroboration efforts.

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1. Alice Noorlander says:
  
  February 27, 2026 at 7:31 pm
  
  Very nice. Love that you didn’t take the Michelle Obama post at face value—claims like that are perfect rage bait.
  
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Kelly Hutton says:

February 26, 2026 at 9:43 am

When the new US Food Pyramid guidelines came out, so many emails flooded my inbox regarding how “backwards” and horrible it was, and how it “flew in the face of the rest of the world’s research” when it comes to nutrition. I immediately found myself enraged! How could they do this?! All full fat butter and meats?! Where are the veggies? Where are the fruit and grains? And what about the legumes?! I also saw a video from a well-respected channel that I’ve been following for years, claiming that the government is in collaboration with the US beef industry to promote those products through the new food guidelines. As I started to discuss it with my family, I realized *in the discussion* that I didn’t actually KNOW what the guidelines were! I hadn’t even looked at them with my own eyes! I took everyone’s word for it and didn’t even bother looking it up myself. I was ashamed. I was so “enraged” that I completely forgot to verify the information. I got caught up in the emotion of it all. Since then, I have looked at the guidelines myself and, while I definitely agree that they go against most of the world’s nutrition research, and they are severely lacking in legumes and whole grains, while promoting saturated fat (jury’s still out on that one for heart disease), etc, It wasn’t as bad as I was influenced to believe. It was actually impossible to find unbiased explanations regarding this, so I suppose I will just take the info from the official sources and form my own opinions from that. I think I should have just done that all along! The emotions that came through the original info sources were so convincing that I just went along for the ride without thinking logically.

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1. Kortney Garrison says:
  
  February 26, 2026 at 5:05 pm
  
  I love that you could shift your perspective even in the midst of your initial emotional response. What a great example for the other learners in your family!
  
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Julie Hanauer says:

February 27, 2026 at 1:06 pm

Thank you for this challenge. When I read or hear information that is new and challenges my thinking, and I want to comment on, I search for articles to see what different sources say. It’s been concerning and eye-opening to see how much information is skewed depending on the alignment of the source – political and religious alignment seems to be the most influential. I’ve often referred to a chart of news companies that suggest how they lean, and if there’s time, it does help to gain perspective on perceived views of each group. I’ve learned things I didn’t know, since I don’t align with a political or religious body. Social media has added a new element to this. I’ve learned many new things over the past few years and have researched subjects further which sometimes opens up new subjects to explore.

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