How to Assess for

Credibility: Lateral Reading

and Media Literacy
Presentation High School, Kathryn Fauria,
4/26/2023
Objectives and Standards!
Common Core State Standards

CCSS.ELA.RI.11-12.5: Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her
exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging

CCSS.ELA.RI.11-12.6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly
effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.

CCSS.ELA.RI.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or
formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem

Other Standards

NBPTS 2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students

TLMS 3: Promotes professional learning for continuous improvement

 Have you ever been on social media and
come across a post that just seems wrong,
but you don’t know how?
I Have a Question Maybe it’s something you heard about before?
(That You Might Too) Maybe the article is older and it’s from something
that happened a long time ago? Maybe it’s not the
whole story?

YOU’RE NOT
ALONE!
What is
“Fake News”?
“Fake News” is an umbrella
term that encompasses false
or misleading information
presented as factual news.

According to a survey by the Pew

Research Center, around 32% of
Americans say “they often see political
news stories online that are made up”.
 Misconceptions Had By Teachers (and Students)

2. Students and readers can figure out credibility of

1. Students grew up with
a website without leaving the site
technology and can easily and
According to Hargittai et al., 2010, Nygren & Guath,
automatically assess
2019, and Porat et al., 2018, students from all
information credibility
demographic groups fared “poorly” when they were
According to Breakstone et al., 2019
asked to judge credibility, focusing overwhelmingly on
and Mathews, 2019, a national survey
surface-level features like their top-level domain
of 3,446 high school students revealed
(.com/.org), appearance and design, information on the
“major deficiencies” when it came to
About page, and links to other websites. Students belief
evaluating online sources’ credibility.
of their own competence also far outstripped their
demonstrated competence.
Why Should We Care?
We need to move from passive to active consumption of media
and pay attention to not only what media we’re consuming but
also what is being said within our media in order to make sense
of the lay of our political and academic landscapes, both as
teachers and as students.
To do that, we need to practice skills like exercising skepticism to
understand the current misinformation landscape and investigate
what we’re reading and seeing (NPR 2019).
“Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can
already imagine the problem all democratic
societies will face in future elections: how to
limit lies when they threaten democracy?”
— Toomas Hendrik Ilves
Former Estonian president, journalist and diplomat
So How Do
We Do This?
Lateral Reading!
 Vertical Reading vs.
Lateral Reading
What we as consumers do normally is
called “vertical reading”, a method where we
start at the beginning of an article and read
through to the end before moving to another
article to verify information.
The problem here is, by the time we get to
the end of the article we forget what we
wanted to fact check!
 Do What Fact Checkers Do!
Lateral Reading
In order to verify the credibility of the information in
any article, critical readers (like fact checkers) use
“lateral reading” and leave a site after a quick scan
to open new browser tabs to judge the credibility of
a site while they’re reading it!

While this might seem like getting distracted,

instead it shortens time wasted on reading articles
with unfounded or non-credible statistics and helps
readers not get absorbed in misinformation.
Think About It!: Compare and Contrast Lateral
and Vertical Reading
Vertical Reading Lateral Reading
 So How Does It Work?
Three Main Questions to Ask
(Adapted from News Literacy Project)

Who…? Have…? Are…?

● Who funds or ● Have other authoritative ● Are the initial results when you
sponsors the site sources reviewed the search the article’s topic from
where the original source site? fact-checking organizations?
piece was published? ● Have other credible ● Are there sources elsewhere
● Who is the author? sources reviewed the contradicting the original piece?
article’s author and the ● Are credible news outlets
author’s other articles? reporting on (or not reporting on)
what you’re reading?
 Let’s Try It!

Evaluate the reliability of the

provided website using lateral
reading.
Use the next few slides and fill in
the provided charts (aka, the
questions on the previous slide) to
go through the source
How’d You Do?
Stanford’s History Education
Group (SHEG)’s Assistant
Director Teresa Ortega takes
you through how to lateral
read this article.

Did you come to the same

conclusion?
 When Should I Use This in My Classroom?

History English Science Speech & Debate

Civics/Gov classes! And any
time you read political
articles, or want to compare
media spin.
Great for Informational Texts!
And any time you read
political articles, or want to
compare media spin.
Great for Informational Texts!
And any time you read
studies and want to double
check their sources and bias.
Great for Domestic and
International Extemporaneous
Speech, Great for Debate:
Congressional,
Lincoln-Douglas, Policy, etc.
 Final Focus!
Pair up with someone near you, and discuss where you might
incorporate lateral reading into your classrooms! Consider:
● An assignment?

● In a project?

● In an essay?
Acknowledgments
Share and Adapt Course Content | 0.504x | MIT Open Learning
Library
● Activity adapted from MIT’s Open Learning Lab - Creative
Commons License
SlidesCarnival for the Template
 Thank You!
This has been a presentation created by Kathryn Fauria for
her Induction Program through CSU Fullerton.

I would greatly appreciate if you could compete this

Google Form for some feedback, in addition to any verbal
feedback you have!