You don’t have to do a three-hour investigation into a source before you engage with it. But if you’re reading a piece on economics, and the author is a Nobel prize-winning economist, that would be useful information. Likewise, if you’re watching a video on the many benefits of milk consumption, you would want to be aware if the dairy industry produced the video. This doesn’t mean the Nobel economist will always be right and the dairy industry can never be trusted. However, knowing the expertise and agenda of the person who created the source is crucial to your interpretation of the information provided.
You may have looked deeper into a source to evaluate it in the past, looking at a site’s About Me section or domain (.com, .edu, etc.). This type of evaluation is reading a site “vertically.” However, “lateral reading” is recommended to learn more about a source and what others say about it, its author, and its publisher, so that you are not just accepting what sources say about themselves.
When investigating a source, professional fact-checkers read laterally across many websites rather than digging deep (reading vertically) into the one source they are evaluating. That is, they don’t spend much time on the source itself, but instead, they quickly get off the page and see what others have said about it. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to better understand the source they’re investigating.
As you try the strategies below, take brief notes on what you find out to build a context for inferring whether the source is credible. A best practice is to have the source in one tab, window, or print and use other tabs and windows to look at what others say about it.
Determine what type of source it is.
In general, substantive popular sources, trade sources, and scholarly sources are more credible than popular sources. That’s because creating these kinds of sources often involves processes that help ensure their accuracy. For instance, major U.S. newspapers correct previously published information every day or week, and research journals retract journal articles whose inaccuracies become apparent. You still need to evaluate them, but it tends to be easier. Ask yourself whether the source is:
a popular source for everyone
a substantive popular source created for educated people or those very interested in the subject
a professional source created for members of a particular profession,
a scholarly source aimed at scholars and others who want a deep view of a subject.
Search the creators- the author, publisher, and/or host website.
Do they know what they are talking about? Or do they just have opinions? Have others raised concerns about them? Did others identify any problems or good things about the source? Try using:
Reference information sites, such as Wikipedia.
Fact-checking sites such as Snopes, Politifact, SciCheck, and FactCheck.org.
News sites of record. Because their evaluation processes are so strong, news publishers like The New York Times and The Washington Post are considered newspapers of record- substantive popular sources with strong processes for credibility. That doesn’t mean they and the many, many other credible, substantive, popular sources never make mistakes. But it means that those like the ones named take special care to be more credible than popular sources.
Tips for Journal Articles:
Are you trying to see what others are saying about a journal article? Some tools track where journal articles (and some conference papers and books) are being cited. Scopus and Web of Science are two common library databases that do this. Google Scholar also does this, as well. A few cautions:
New content hasn’t had a chance to get cited.
Some subject areas may use certain formats more than others (books may get more citations in math than in physics, for example).
Citing something doesn’t equal agreeing with it.
Different subject areas have different citation levels. For example, articles in medicine or physics tend to get more citations than articles in history or literature.
Some journals’ items get cited more because of their reputation, but that doesn’t mean other titles have bad content.
