Bringing Closer Analysis to Lateral Reading
In the first of this tutorial series (Evaluating Online Sources Through Lateral Reading: An Introduction), we focused on evaluating source credibility mainly through lateral reading, the process of leaving a website in order to see what others have said about it. In this second tutorial, we combine lateral reading with additional strategies for evaluating sources and their credibility. Used together, these techniques complement and strengthen one another. Combining lateral reading with other critical evaluation techniques is especially helpful when you can’t find much information written about a specific source, or when you’re unsure whether the additional sources that you’ve found are themselves credible or fair in their reporting and assessment.
We will present the question words what, who, why, and how as prompts for analyzing the context of a source and its credibility. These lines of question are particularly useful for determining a source’s context (for example, who it’s written by and for and what its purpose is), as well as more specific indicators of credibility, like expertise and processes for ensuring accuracy. They can be used as you read laterally - that is, as you look for other coverage about a site). These questions can also be used in cases in which you’re unable to find much information about a source and look more closely at the information on the site that you are evaluating.
Of course, the framing questions what, who, why, and how are not the only way to think about sources. Rather, consider them prompts to help you analyze a source more critically, not rigid rules or comprehensive checklists.
(Remember, try using SIFT before doing this closer evaluation. If a source isn't credible, it may not be worth the time required for this more detailed work. But when you need to vet a source more carefully, these guiding questions and criteria are key to explore.)
Image credit: "Through the magnifying glass" by Lanzen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
How Lateral Reading and Closer Source Evaluation Work Together
Lateral reading is helpful in part because it allows us to find other research that has already been done on a source (though of course we should also consider the credibility of the additional sources we consult). Through lateral reading we can often learn a lot about the What, Who, Why, and How of a source. Lateral reading also enables us to compare how a source represents itself to how others describe the source. If there is a clear disconnect between how a source creator represents that source and how others speak about it, we need to consider what might explain the discrepancy.
There will, however, be instances in which you can’t find much information about a source or its creator, or when you’re unsure how to reconcile conflicting information from different sources. Particularly in these situations, you may need to evaluate the original site’s content more fully. The closer evaluation strategies that we’ll explore here are intended for this kind of closer analysis.
A Holistic Approach to Evaluation
As we take a holistic approach to source evaluation, we’ll use the evaluative question words what, who, why, and how as prompts for critical source analysis. As you engage with both lateral reading and critical source analysis, you’ll likely find information that relates to more than one of these types of questions. For example, identifying a source’s who often reveals something about the why, and vice-versa.
Often you’ll be answering these questions by looking at other sources that you find through lateral reading (rather than staying on the website). That said, sometimes you’ll need to look for clues from the website you’re evaluating that you can use for lateral reading. For example, if through lateral reading you initially don’t find much information about the website in question, you might visit its About page to look for more clues about who is behind the site and then leave the website to find other coverage.
Consider the questions presented in this tutorial as an overall evaluative framework that you can return to throughout your process of gathering information about a source. These questions are NOT intended as a checklist that you go through in a purely linear fashion. Whether reading laterally or directly examining the main source that is in question, you’re likely to consider multiple types of questions simultaneously, even though at times certain evaluative questions or criteria may be more important than others.
At the end of this second tutorial, we’ll revisit the website MinimumWage.com, which you evaluated in the first of this tutorial series. You’ll use lateral reading in combination with the evaluation questions and criteria discussed next in order to assess Minimumwage.com in further detail.
Image credit: "Holistic Thinking" by mary hodder is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
CC-BY-NC-SA
This guide was created by Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis at Rowan University and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).