Hi everyone! I just got off reading through 15+ pages of 'Effectively and Efficiently Reading the Credibility of Online Sources' today and I could not wait to share my first thoughts about it! The authors, Ellen Carillo & Alice Horning mention that the web has plenty of credible information on it, but the sheer volume of information can make the process of finding this information more challenging.
They further highlight that critical reading skills are essential to identify the differences between misinformation and disinformation on the web, among all the credible information. The authors in the chapter also go over the ways of evaluating sources. One of the ways includes reading laterally, involves leaving the source and moving to other sources across (i.e., laterally) the Web to assess the source’s credibility. Using lateral reading strategies can reveal bias in all kinds of material, which is crucial to negotiating the credibility of sources and representing controversial issues in fair and balanced ways. The authors finally recommend reflecting on our current online reading practices and then improve our analysis of the credibility of online sources.
In fact, I came across something similar while reading about an article on 'Credibility of the Web: Why We Need Dialectical Reading' by the author Bertram C. Bruce. In the article, the author mentions that the challenges to the credibility of sites on the web come from many factors. Among these are the speed of change to web sites, the sheer quantity of information, commercialism, the distributed authority of web authorship, etc. The author thus, highlights the need for dialectical reading of the web. This means opening oneself up to different ways of interpreting the world and seeking to understand the political, social, and historical dimensions of web discourse. Here is the link to this interesting article on how the author arrived at this conclusion:
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/13425/credibility.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
There is also an interesting video on this topic that explains how to evaluate sources for credibility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYI1FK7xbHY