Science in social media
Students are introduced to lateral reading in a video, a short text and a practical exercise. The learning activity is part of a course in digital source criticism aimed at new students at Universitetet i Bergen.
Learning outcomes
The activity creates an understanding of why it is important to critically assess supposedly scholarly information that is spread on social media. You gain experience with lateral reading as a simple and effective method for source criticism.
Context
Introducing a course on digital source criticism with a learning activity about science in social media creates a bridge between what students have learned in upper secondary education and university level. Students are reminded that the critical eye they practised as a pupil at school is still relevant at university, and it thereby functions as an introduction to the following learning object, which goes deeper into what characterises sources and source criticism at university level.
Lateral reading is a simple method used by fact-checkers, which has proved to be more effective than checklists for assessing information in social media and news stories.
The steps of the activity
1. Watch a short video that introduces the topic
2. Read a short text that explains the lateral reading method
Lateral reading is an effective technique for reading critically. It is easy to get caught up in the content of the message, but when you read laterally the focus is instead on the sender.
When you read laterally online you can, for example, search for information about the sender and the story. What do other sources, for example Wikipedia, say about the sender? What background does the sender have? What have they written previously? Could the sender have a hidden agenda? Have other, more credible sources written anything about the story? When you know this, you can better assess whether the sender has a valuable and relevant contribution to the story.
3. Look at an infographic about how information spreads
Graphics from WHO (2022) Let’s flatten the infodemic curve. Available from: https://www.who.int/. Accessed 20.06.2022
Information that looks exciting and spreads quickly is therefore not necessarily reliable or complete. You should therefore always assess information before you share it further.
Misinformation is conveyed unintentionally, as misunderstandings or misinterpretations. It could for example be a journalist who has misunderstood a source.
Disinformation is created and spread deliberately as false or manipulated facts and narratives, for example propaganda.
4. Practical task: assess the web page
You are now going to critically assess a web page.
In this task we ask you to read the web page laterally, and assess the sender's reliability and the credibility of the story.
Several news channels and websites have covered the story about the plastic ocean. Some of these are keen to expose or “debunk” the story by presenting the whole plastic problem as a myth. But plastic in the ocean is a problem – so who are the senders behind such claimed myth-busting, and what agenda might they have?
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