A 2018 Study from Standford University examined how undergraduate, PhD historians, and professional fact-checkers evaluated the credibility of online information. The study found that historians and students tended to read "vertically"--that is they scroll up and down the website to evaluate it. If the website had a nice logo and a legitimate sounding domain name and well-designed graphs, they quickly concluded the information was credible.
Instead, fact-checkers read "laterally." They took a preliminary glance at the website and then opened a new browser to see what others said about the source. In fact, when looking at a news story for credibility, one fact-checker spent only 8 seconds on a website before opening a new tab and looking up information on the organization that published the article.
Next, fact-checkers continued to turn to outside sources for the information they were evaluating--they went upstream, or they looked at what the source was sighting. If they had hyperlinks, they followed them and evaluated those information for credibility. Are they sighting scholarly sources, experts, or legislation? Or, are they links to conspiracy theorists or fringe "experts?" Even if an article is loaded with links, they may not tie back to helpful primary information. It can be helpful to look for sources than bring in experts from multiple perspectives.
Finally, Fact-checkers acknowledge bias. Sometimes it's obvious that an author or media source is creating content from a particular viewpoint or perspective. Additionally, readers have their own beliefs and ideas (political, social, economic, religious, etc.) that they bring to the table as well. A 2016 study published in Computers in Human Behavior reports that people are almost two times as likely to gravitate toward information that supports whatever they already believe.
While we can't get rid of all of our biases (nor should we), It is important to acknowledge that we have them and that we are using them to judge information. Sophisticated readers can object to the presentation of the facts or the conclusions that the author drew without rejecting accurate data as fake news. In other words, you don't have to like a piece of information to accept that it may be factually correct.
Take two minutes to think about how you can apply the concepts that we have talked about to Dance videos.
Take a few minutes to discuss what you thought about with a neighbor or two.
Share what you talked about with the rest of the class.
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