Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-Checker
Lateral reading is a fact-checking strategy where you evaluate unfamiliar sources by opening multiple browser tabs to search for external information about the source, rather than spending time on the source itself.
THE IDEA
Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-Checker
Now consider an approach tailored to a digital environment. It’s the key to SIFT’s investigate the source, and it is what professional fact-checkers do to cut through bluster to arrive at reliable conclusions. Fact-checkers don’t spend minutes dwelling on an unfamiliar site. They generally ignore the “About” page. They might glance at the URL, but they pay little attention to whether a site is a dot-com or a dot-org. To learn about an unfamiliar site, they do something that, at first glance, seems like a contradiction. They leave it.
Instead of spending minutes on a site they’ve never seen, fact-checkers put the name of the individual or group in their browsers and open new tabs across the top of their screen. Fact-checkers draw on the entire internet to evaluate an individual site, a strategy we call lateral reading. By reading laterally and scanning across a series of open tabs, every one of our fact-checkers detected the agenda of the American College of Pediatricians in seconds, leaving the college students and the university professors at the starting gate.9
When to use it
Evaluating the credibility of a new website or blog.
Researching an organization mentioned in a political advertisement.
Verifying information shared on social media from an unknown account.
Assessing the reliability of a news article that seems biased.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Evaluating the American College of Pediatricians
Caulfield and Wineburg report that their professional fact-checkers quickly identified the American College of Pediatricians’ agenda by searching outside the site. They describe the fact-checkers as much faster than the college students and university professors in the comparison.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you apply lateral reading to evaluate a news article from an unfamiliar source?
What are the benefits of opening multiple tabs to research a source instead of reading its 'About' page?
Think of a time when you judged a source based on its URL or design. How might lateral reading have changed your assessment?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Verified How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (Mike Caulfield, Sam Wineburg)