Lateral Reading
(using SIFT Method)
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Lateral Reading judges a source by consulting other sources and cross-referencing them with other reliable sources. Staying on a single site and using a checklist to evaluate it before realizing that it is not a worthy site can be a waste of time (Digital Inquiry Group, 2020). Lateral Reading can be taught to students. Researchers argue that students who have civic online digital literacy lessons greatly improve their ability to evaluate websites compared to those who do not (Digital Inquiry Group, 2020). Lateral Reading pushes users to search for other reputable websites and organizations to discover what they have to say about the topic. Many times, when using lateral reading to judge a website, users will employ the SIFT method to help them. SIFT stands for Stop, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, and Trace Claims to Original Context (Caulfield, 2019).
STOP: Do you know the website, source, or the reputation of the site or author?
INVESTIGATE the SOURCE: What are other sites or ogranizations saying? Is the information influenced by politics or funding agencies? Have fact-checkers investigated it?
FIND BETTER COVERAGE: Look for multiple sources to see what they have to say.
TRACE, CLAIMS, QUOTES, and MEDIA to the ORIGINAL CONTEXT: Refer back to the original source to check for accuracy. Has anything being edited? What happened before or after?
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