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Digital Literacy FLC (Spring 2021)

Resources from the spring 2021 Digital Literacy Faculty Learning Community at Rowan University.

Fact-Checking and Evaluating Online Sources: Meeting Structure

This meeting involved a presentation from and discussion with PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief Angie Drobnic Holan. This page includes materials that she shared during the meeting, as well as ideas and resources that FLC members shared throughout the semester.

Emergent Themes

Many of the most well-known and well-established methods of fact-checking and evaluating information online (e.g. the CRAAP test) were developed in earlier eras of the internet and do not account for the specific dynamics of the current information (and mis/disinformation) landscape

  • Research has demonstrated that these methods are ineffective in the contemporary online landscape. In empirical studies, students routinely fail to distinguish misinformation and disinformation from legitimate reputable sources, and they are commonly misled by the source evaluation strategies that they have been taught in school: paying attention to top-level domains (.org vs. .com), assessing the professional appearance of the site, examining the content to determine if it cites sources or refers to experts, CRAAP test steps, etc. (see Wineburg & McGrew, 2017, and Breakstone et. al., 2021)

  • These earlier strategies and tools build upon habits of mind and practices that we associate with effective analysis and critical thinking (e.g. close reading); however, these values are counter-intuitive to effective online information evaluation. Rather than spend a lot of time carefully examining information sources online, rendering oneself more susceptible to being misled, it is more effective to prioritize more targeted methods of verifying a source’s reputability before engaging with the content at all.

  • A more effective strategy to evaluate online information and instruct students to evaluate online information is “Lateral reading”: a method of evaluating online sources derived from Wineburg & McGrew’s research, which builds on the source assessment strategies used by professional fact checkers

  • Lateral reading: opening up new tabs to verify the reputability of the author and/or the organization/company sponsoring the information elsewhere

  • The admonishment from conspiracy theorists to “do your own research” builds upon this susceptibility: we are trained in most educational contexts that doing “deep dives” and “going down the rabbit hole” = good research. This impulse is manipulated by those who want to spread misinformation. A better habit of mind to foster in students is to verify the credibility of the producers and publishers of any information before engaging with it deeply (see Caulfield, 2018, Warzel, 2021).

Further Reading