You've had some practice in tracing images and stories upstream to their sources, and you should be starting to apply that same skill to the claims you're investigating this week. But what happens when you've tracked a claim back to its earliest origin? Or how do you evaluate a claim from a web source that doesn't really cite other sources or lead you anywhere else? The next skill in our fact-checking toolkit is "Reading Laterally."
Like before, the Web Literacy book is a great resource for learning about how to read and evaluate sources critically. In particular, the section on reading laterally (that's chapters 16 - 29) does a good job of distinguishing lateral reading as a technique that must be practiced intentionally and that one gets better at with practice. It's the kind of thing we're used to doing, in other words, but in fact it's what professional fact-checkers work to get good at.
Start by reading these chapters and follow the examples and activities.
There a few examples and activities in these chapters that you can complete on your own. Two of the activities will be better accomplished working in groups, so for the Evaluate a Site exercise, split it up like this:
#group-one, evaluate sites 1 - 3#group-two, evaluate sites 4 - 6#group-three, evaluate sites 7 - 9#group-four, evaluate sites 10 - 11You can delegate these however you like within your group's channel, and when you think you've successfully read laterally so you can answer the questions, "Who runs them? To what purpose? What is their history of accuracy and how do they rate on process, aim, and expertise?", one of you should share the answers to those questions for each site in the #general channel.
Remember, this is reading laterally, which means you're using information from other sources to find out about these sites. Do not just read these websites' "About" page or wikipedia article. The techniques are described and demonstrated in Chapter 18.
Next, complete the activity, "Find Top Authorities for a Subject". As a group, choose one of those suggested topics, then each of you do some research to find at least one authoritative book or website each.
By now you should have a basic sense of what your claim is about and maybe where it's coming from.
Start working on your Google doc adding whatever content you know, and since this is a work in progress, don't worry too much about getting everything perfect in the first draft. This is a collaborative writing project, so you'll be helping each other refine and clarify the text as you work.
You should also have a conversation in your group about how to delegate and divide the workload, if you haven't already.
Each group should also have chosen a module by today and communicated that choice to me somehow. Remember, your work is independent and self-directed, so choose goals to pursue or projects to complete that will challenge your comfort zone.
Ideally, publish your "Phase 1" blog entry today if you haven't already.