WR 122 Robillard & Fierman: Evaluate Sources

Textbook

Here is a link to our textbook Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers by Mike Caulfield. 

 

Research Technique: Reading Laterally

What is “reading laterally”?

 

In a nutshell, it’s about using and evaluating connected sources instead of relying on one source of information.

Good fact-checkers read “laterally,” across many connected sites instead of digging deep into the site at hand.

When you start to read a book, a journal article, or a physical newspaper in the “real world,” you already know quite a bit about your source. You’ve subscribed to the newspaper, or picked it up from a newsstand because you’ve heard of it. You’ve ordered the book from Amazon or purchased it from a local bookstore because it was a book you were interested in reading. You’ve chosen a journal article either because of the quality of the journal article or because someone whose expertise and background you know cited it. In other words, when you get to the document you need to evaluate, the process of getting there has already given you some initial bearings.

For more, please see this handout from PCC Writing instructors about reading laterally. 

Adapted from Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers Copyright © 2017 by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

 

 

Crash Course: Check Yourself with Lateral Reading

How You Can Fact Check the Internet

Evaluating Sources: Questions to Ask

How do you know if a source is right for your research? Below are some questions you can ask about your sources. While you're not always expected to use sources by expert authors in publications without any bias, it's still good to be aware of these things when considering how well you trust their conclusions.

  1. Is this article relevant? What is the author investigating and how does that relate to what you're researching?
  2. Who is the author and what are their qualifications? Are their qualifications good enough for the weight you are placing on their conclusions? 
  3. Who published this? What is their purpose? To inform? To promote a particular viewpoint? To sell something?
  4. Have other people reviewed the information provided to make sure it's accurate? If it's in a newspaper, magazine, or journal, it will have been reviewed at least by an editor and possibly by other experts on the topic. 
  5. Can you tell where the author got their information from? Their own experience? Interviewing people? A research experiment? Other experts? Do they provide references or some clue about their own sources?
  6. Is the information current enough for the topic you're researching? For example, something on global warming from 1980 will be pretty out-of-date today.