22 Responses

1. I think that in a world where much of our news is shared via social media, verifying sources is an extrememly important skill. It validates (or invalidates) the credibility of the information source – so it is easier to sort between the truth and the lies, the real and the AI. Do you find the Media Bias Chart type categorization of news sources to be helpful or reliable?

   Reply

   1. Thanks Camille. I think media bias charts are most useful when you don’t take them as absolute. They’re a good starting point, especially for orienting the reader within a broad landscape that is otherwise difficult to get a handle on. We’ll cover these in a later skill!

      Reply

2. I believe that this is very important, I had never really thought about this before, but it makes a lot of sense to check your sources, especially on the internet where anybody can put anything, and also with AI where if it is trained on info from the internet, that is all the info that it has, and therefore may not be accurate. I have experienced this when working with AI, a lot of the time if it doesn’t know something it makes stuff up.

   Reply

3. While I was opening this article my 10 y/o sat down next to me. Upon seeing what I was reading he asked, “What is lateral.” I simply replied, “to the side.” To which he responded, “doesn’t everybody read that way?” It was too good not to share.

   Reply

4. This is certainly a skill I want my children to develop, and I know I need to take more time to read laterally myself. It is so easy and quick to accept the AI answer that now comes at the top of every Google search but of course that information might be totally true, partly true, or ridiculously untrue.

   Reply

5. Lateral reading is an exceptionally important skill to learn and practice, but it is not suitable as a general solution to the problem of poor information quality online. People scrolling through social media are shown countless news stories, opinion videos, statistics of dubious accuracy, and partisan political advertising. Researching the origins of all these pieces of content is not a realistic expectation to place on a consumer of online information.

   For me, this is a matter of information sourcing; if somebody obtains their news primarily through X, Reddit, or TikTok, no amount of lateral reading will be likely to save them from having their worldview warped by algorithms which favor engagement and divisiveness over accuracy and healthy discourse. Without trustworthy news sources as the basis of informational intake, it is remarkably easy for facts and reality to fade into irrelevance.

   That being said, lateral reading is undoubtedly necessary in many cases. When we research online, it is of crucial importance to know the biases, influences, and ulterior motives effecting the producers of the information we consume. Lateral reading prevents us from being tricked by untrustworthy actors, but it perhaps more importantly helps us to contextualize content in an informed, thoughtful manner. It is an irreplaceable means of understanding. It is not, however, a solution for the problem of misinformation online.

   Using your model, perhaps we should attempt to make our modern Internet reading more similar to pre-Internet reading, rather than attempt to improve a fundamentally flawed “post-Internet reading”.

   Reply

   1. Thanks Luke. Appreciate the thoughtful reply. Lateral reading is definitely not sufficient, but we’re starting with some basic building blocks. It is perhaps most useful when you are searching for an answer to a particular question, more than when you are aimlessly scrolling. It’s much harder to defend against your own vulnerabilities if you’re willing to expose yourself with something like a directionless preview of everything the algorithm thinks will engage you, especially in a short video or blurb. In that case the issue is a bit more fundamental than knowing how to verify your sources. As you suggest, if you are needlessly confusing yourself by scrolling through arbitrary sources on social media platforms, the problem may be as much with your habits as with our information environment.

      That said, even trustworthy news sources disagree, and even full-time journalists, reporters, and other media professionals have a hard time getting to the bottom of things, especially in real time, so some confusion is inevitable, and taking the time to figure out a small range of relevant, good-faith sources you can turn to for triangulation when you’re confused, seems like a good idea. As you suggest—no tool or trick-of-the-trade is going to replace the value of having a clean and limited supply of inputs that you can selectively attend to based on what’s going on and what you need to know.

      All of this helps explain why the full Media Literacy course starts with units on the Fundamentals (philosophy, psychology, technology, etc.), History, and Politics, before getting into some of the hands-on stuff in the final two units on Skills and Language. We try to start with a strong foundation and a fundamental approach that results in the right orientation to the media environment before we actually engage with the media environment.

      Thanks again. Great to hear from you.

      Reply

      1. PS: Your thought about pre- and post-Internet reading makes some sense if I get what you’re saying—definitely a good idea to primarily read from verified sources, rather than read from many random sources and hope you’ll have the time and wherewithal to get to the bottom of every claim with one superficial reading trick or another. But it’s probably inevitable that at some point or other—perhaps frequently—you’ll come across information from a source you don’t know, and you’ll want to learn more about who’s making the claim before you run with it; that’s where something like lateral reading comes in.

         Reply

6. This is an important topic for everyone to think about. Looking forward to reading and learning more about it.

   Reply

7. This is not something I had ever thought much about doing when searching on the internet but I will definitely be more mindful of using lateral reading in the future. Especially with all the AI that comes up for everything.

   Reply

8. I feel these skills are helpful not only for students but for adults as well. We grew up in a society where news was generally fact-checked. Nowadays, anyone can put their opinion online and as long as enough people share it, other people will believe it. Checking sources for everything is exhausting, but necessary

   Reply

   1. Thanks Brandie—exhausting is right. I’ve found that a combination of being okay not trying to be informed about everything, and referring to a few consistent sources I trust based on experience and broad reading, help me keep my energy up and cynicism down. How about you?

      Here’s to trying!

      Reply

9. Especially with AI. I have used it for fleshing out ideas or getting a quick overview of a new topic I know nothing about; but it is just a tool and only as good as its source material. I used it to try to get my head wrapped around a new law my state was enacting and luckily noticed the AI had wondered off course and was sourcing random material that had nothing to do with my state. It would be funny if we weren’t all so prone to never question. At least I learned to read laterally.

   Reply

10. A friend was espousing a viewpoint from he got by listening to a person on an hour and a half talk he watched online. He believed everything the person said because the person was a Harvard graduate. I watched a few minutes of the video and was shocked. I looked up the person. Yes, he did graduate from Harvard, however, the science he was stating was not verified by other scientists, the results he claimed were not able to be replicated by other scientists, and the sample sizes of his tests were too small to make the sweeping generalizations he was making. Other scientists did not consider him credible, saying that he had gone far astray into conspiracy theories. I even looked into the reputation of the people who were saying these things. I showed my friend what I had found. He would not even look at it, just saying that he believed everything the guy said, because the guy was a Harvard graduate, and that I was being closed minded by not being open to different ideas. Well, he just listened to the guy for an hour and a half, and I spent about that much time looking into the guy and the others who were saying he was biased. I felt comfortable that I was not going to be swayed by listening to someone who was not a reliable source of information.

    Reply

11. We are finding it frustrating regarding AI in particular. For example, when my son is researching something, of course in any browser the first thing that comes up is the AI Summary. It is so convincing in its supposed “accuracy.” It reads like fact. We are constantly having to remind ourselves that we need to scroll over and click on those sources that the AI is using to generate the summary. It’s time consuming and distracting when you just want to find answers. It was almost easier when we didn’t have AI summaries as the first thing on search engine results pages. I think we forget that there are actual search results below this AI, of which we can quickly do a first-pass analysis if the source is credible, what the bias is, etc. The more we use the AI summaries, the more we see them, the more we are trained to believe that they are fact and that they don’t need to be checked or questioned. Even for us, who try to be diligent in knowing where our information is coming from, we still get fooled into thinking that the AI is automatically legit. When I look up quick questions during our homeschool day, my son very frequently asks me “mom, is that the AI answer or is that from an actual source?” While I love that he asks me that, it’s sad that without him asking, sometimes I take the AI at face value without even thinking about it!

    Reply

    1. Agreed—the confidence of AI is very lulling. You probably do this already/automatically, but in case it’s helpful, it helps me to try and be aware of what type of question I’m asking. If it’s the type of question I’d be okay with a quick Wikipedia gloss for, I’m usually also okay with AI’s quick gloss of Wikipedia, among it’s other sources. I’ll scan the sources it used and click around if I don’t recognize them, but I don’t mind letting it act as my personal assistant for questions I’d be okay having a TA look up for me. If it’s something I really need to get a handle on, something that has become political, something current, something I need context for, etc.—that’s when I know I’ll have to work extra hard to use the AI as my research assistant, not my answer key. I don’t know if that sounds subtle or obvious, but it’s a distinction that feels useful to me as I try to figure out how to work with these chatbots.

       Reply

       1. Thank you for your response! YES I actually do this now and try to explain this to my son. He was leaning toward an “all or nothing” approach to AI. I found that he was taking too long to look up an answer to a simple question, and I asked him why it was taking him so long. He was ignoring the AI and searching for a “reputable source.” Well, this was a very simple question regarding info that is common knowledge (I can’t remember what it was, something like a conversion factor, description of a time period, something like that). We weren’t using the info in a paper or anything, it was just one of those “hey, look that up quick” FYI questions. I had to try to explain to him that quickly using the AI or wikipedia is fine for many things. I find it hard to describe what exactly those things are, though, as through experience I mostly just know when it’s appropriate to use AI and when it’s not. There aren’t really any hard rules around it. I thank you for your explanation of your guidelines on what you think is okay to use AI/wiki for, and when it’s not appropriate. Your distinctions do make sense! I will pass these along to my family.

          Reply

    2. I changed our browser default search engine to DuckDuckGo because I could turn off the AI blurbs on it. AI and my son believing it was the final straw for me. I’d been reluctant to change.

       Reply

12. When I was looking for credible news sources about six months ago I kinda did a lateral search without knowing it. I went to Google and searched for the bias of various newspapers. Based off of that list I was able to find several papers that I felt would give me a balanced view of the news. I dismissed those that fell too far to either the political right or left. I instead chose papers that had a centrist focus even though they had a slant to the left or the right. Now that I have done this challenge I can see that diving in deeper does give clarity about the sources and the people behind the publications. Having knowledge about the people behind for example, the Wall Street Journal provided me with the understanding of why the journal has its political bent. Also reading laterally allows one the ability to respectfully challenge people, that believe because someone with money and particular political views owns a media company then that source must be illegitimate. If one is knowledgeable about their new sources they are able to explain why their sources are legit regardless of the personal views of the owner(s).

    Reply

13. When I first the term lateral reading, I thought it meant finding other sources (ie, corroboration). It hadn’t really occurred to me to check the source first.

    Reply

14. Thank you for this challenge. I have been doing lateral reading for a few years to some extent, when I read something new or want to share it with other people. If I have time, I try to find three sources that verify the information. If it involves information that challenges a certain worldview or political ideology, I’ve also been watching what sources are willing to report it or completely ignore it. It’s pretty revealing when a source completely ignores something or reports in a way that reflects positively or negatively on the people involved. It’s clear that many sources are controlling information and this has led many people to feel frustrated and suspicious of everyone who says anything that makes us uncomfortable or challenges issues we’ve made a stand for.

    Reply

15. I have found that lateral reading is getting harder and harder on the primary browsers. When the first reference is an AI response it then feels like falling down a rabbit hole trying to determine where the information is coming from. I have always leaned toward collaboration of information rather than where the initial information came from. I can see how lateral reading could challenge that way of thinking.

    Reply