Lateral Reading Fake News How To Evaluate Information Avoid Mis

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 5, 2025, 8:48 PM

lateral reading fake news how to evaluate information avoid mis

Lateral reading is a simple and effective means of evaluating online information sources to help you learn if an unfamiliar website is conveying worthwhile, trustworthy information. When you come across a site new to you, don't start by actually looking at the page itself, or looking for artificial markers of "legitimacy" like the About page, URL, or citations. Instead, move laterally away from the page by opening a new tab in your browser and conducting a web search for the site or its author to see what others have to say about... Bad actors on the internet will, of course, tell you they're trustworthy, but newspaper stories, fact checking sites, or even Wikipedia articles about them may help you discover the site's ill intentions. The following short videos explain lateral reading in greater detail: Crumb Library: 315-267-2485 Crane Library: 315-267-2451 library@potsdam.edu Text Us!: 315-277-3730

SUNY Potsdam College Libraries 44 Pierrepont Ave Potsdam, NY 13676 One of the most effective strategies for evaluating information found online is to engage in lateral reading. Lateral reading involves leaving the website, opening a new tab, and seeing what trusted digital sources say about that website and/or claim. The below CrashCourse video explains how you can use lateral reading to fact-check a source. It is important to note that several tools have been developed from lateral reading, most notably the SIFT method. This strategy walks through four "moves" that you need to take before reading and engaging with an online source.

For more information, see the SIFT Method infographic. This video was created by CrashCourse in partnership with MediaWise, the Poynter Institute, and the Stanford History Education Group. This video was created by CNTRL-F with support from CIVIX. ⚠️Is a link not working? Click here to report it. 660-248-6271 library@centralmethodist.edu

Lateral readers don’t spend time on the page or site until they’ve first gotten their bearings by looking at what other sites and resources say about the source they are looking at. 1. See what other authoritative sources have said about the site. 2. Open up many tabs in the browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the site you are investigating. 3.

Evaluate the information in other pages that offer information about the source under investigation. The truth is more likely to be found in the network of links (and commentaries) than in the site itself. 4. When you get your bearings from the rest of the network, re-engage with the original content. Here is how Peter Adams, the News Literacy Project’s senior vice president of education, described it during a March 14 segment of NPR’s All Things Considered: “The equivalent of taking 20 seconds and washing your hands is very much the same in the information space.

If everyone can take 20 seconds, investigate the source, do a quick Google search, stay skeptical, we can eliminate a great deal of the confusion and misinformation out there.” From https://newslit.org/tips-tools/take-20-seconds-for-good-information-hygiene/ If you are unfamiliar with the source, it is always a good idea to open a new tab and do a web search on the source and/or the organization that is providing it. This is what is called "lateral" reading. From: https://library.nwacc.edu/lateralreading Lateral reading can be used to investigate claims.

Notice how the following examples recommend lateral reading without calling it that. TikTok News Literacy Project - Not Falling for Misinformation Transcript Here’s an in for 2024 – Media Literacy. This year is going to be crazy. AI is rapidly advancing; conspiracy theories are becoming more and more mainstream. Not to mention, it’s a presidential election year.

[music] So can we please make fact-checking the vibe for 2024? Also because it’s really easy. I work in news and media literacy and here are some of the simplest things you can start doing while you’re scrolling right now. First thing is just checking your emotions. Misinformation is designed to get a reaction out of people, a lot of the claims are simply rage bait. You can essentially pull any sad, scary image from the internet, pair it with an out-of-context piece of information, use emotional language and people react to it out of impulse.

Next, I always take a closer look at the source. Are they an expert? Or are they just someone with a hot take? And I love a good hot take, there are a lot of really smart people on the internet making informational content. It comes down to what is the evidence they’re supplying you with. If someone is just saying things with confidence without citing a single reputable source, no thank you not in 2024.

And, you might not like it, you just have to slow down. We have to break that habit of constanrly scrolling and accepting information that feels true. So take that quick pause to plug some keywords into a search engine, read multiple sources, spend the 30 seconds it takes to do reverse image research. Because misinformation is out. Check out Rumor Guard from the News Literacy Project to learn about five factors you should consider when evaluating the credibility of a claim. Then use the techniques associated with each factor to apply your knowledge!

In 2017, a group of researchers in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University conducted a study in which they asked fact checkers, PhD historians, and Stanford undergraduates to examine the websites of... Each group was asked to evaluate the trustworthiness of the two organizations. All of the fact-checkers were able to determine that the American Academy of Pediatrics was the legitimate professional organization, while the American College of Pediatricians was actually a cloaked hate group with a hidden... Only 50% of the historians, and 20% of the Stanford undergraduates were able to identify the Academy as the legitimate professional organization. The researchers suggest that the fact-checkers were able to sniff out the cloaked hate group because they didn't just stay on the organizations' websites. They opened new browser tabs and searched for information about each group using Google and Wikipedia.

The historians and undergraduates, however, mostly stayed on each organization's website, read the "about" section, and looked for things like misspellings and banner ads to determine trustworthiness. So-called "fake news" websites and organizations with a hidden agenda are getting very good at deception, and, in order to be responsible Internet users, we need to be more vigilant about verifying our sources. One strategy that we can use is "lateral reading." Good lateral readers use the simple techniques of the fact-checkers in the Stanford study example. If you would like a detailed explanation of how lateral reading works, please watch the video below. For more information, please see: Wineburg, Sam and McGrew, Sarah, Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information (October 6, 2017). Stanford History Education Group Working Paper No.

2017-A1 . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3048994 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048994 There is a lot of bad information out there. Some of it is fake news: disinformation created with the purpose of deceiving you. And some of it is just misinformation due to sloppy reporting, lazy writing, or over-relying on AI. No matter the purpose behind the bad information, it's important for you to know how to spot it so that you can avoid it.

Here is a quick example of something that happened to me recently. I like to give my poodle a Milk Bone every morning when I leave for work. She loves them. But then my daughter-in-law texted me one day saying that Milk Bones cause cancer and I need to stop feeding them to Lainey. I watched the video that she sent made by Planet Paws that claimed that Milk Bones contain a cancer-causing preservative called BHA and should never be given to dogs. I instantly felt bad about feeding my dog toxic treats for so long.

I was about to throw the rest of the Milk Bones away, but then I thought, "Hang on. Why is this the first I'm hearing about this?" So I Googled it, and it didn't take long to discover that Milk Bones are, in fact, safe for dogs and don't cause cancer. Snopes, a reliable non-profit website that fact checks popular claims on social media, found that the creators of the video had misread or misinterpreted a report about BHA. The report found that most dog food and treats, including Milk Bone, contain small amounts of BHA which is used as a preservative. A dog would have to eat hundreds of Milk Bones every day for years before the BHA levels would be high enough to be of concern. But the creators of the video simply saw that Milk Bones have BHA, and since BHA in high doses has been linked to rare instances of cancer, they concluded that Milk Bones cause cancer.

This little bit of investigative work (what I call "lateral reading") only took a few seconds, but it put my mind at ease. I didn't have to throw out the Milk Bones, and I didn't have to feel guilty that I was poisoning my dog. In addition to reading the Snopes article, I also checked out Planet Paws, the folks who created the video. They are legit. They have a vet on their staff. I don't think they were purposely trying to spread fake news.

Their intentions were good. But, like all humans, they made a mistake. They misunderstood a scientific article about BHA and then shared their faulty conclusions. Unfortunately, most people don't take the time to read laterally, so their video is still being shared and reposted, and the false notion that Milk Bones cause cancer is still being spread on social... In this short video from Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information, John Green teaches you how to employ lateral reading in evaluating your information. Lateral reading means: “instead of digging deep into the site at hand...lateral readers don’t spend time on the page or site until they’ve first gotten their bearings by looking at what other sites and...

Lateral Reading Fake News How To Evaluate Information Avoid Mis

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