Evaluating Information Sources

Tips for Lateral Reading

• Look for the original source of the information. When you see "According to xxyNews" or "Research says"... find those sources.
• Google search a domain: baltimoregazette.com -site:baltimoregazette.com. . This way you'll find articles talking about the site, not on the site.
• Check the Waybackmachine for page changes
• Look up the domain who owns the domain/ when it was created at https://lookup.icann.org/
• Use Google Scholar to check author expertise
• Find the topic fact-checked elsewhere using site: and the topic in Google.
• For example site:snopes.com obama iraqi visa ban 2011
• Use Google Scholar to see if articles were cited by peers. Look up the impact factor of a journal - google search “impact factor” “name of journal” The impact factor measures “the journal’s influence in the academic community. While a flawed metric for assessing the relative importance of journals, it is a useful tool for quickly identifying journals that are not part of a known circle of academic discourse, or that are not peer-reviewed.” (Caufield, 2021)

Read Laterally 

Fact Checking Sites

• If you reveal that your source is questionable, low quality, or untrustworthy...
• Stop immediately and circle back to where you started
• Try a fresh, new search with stronger keywords and search terms using reliable and trustworthy sources.
• Use what you have found to find a higher quality source