Lateral Reading Broken into Steps:
Mike Caulfield's SIFT Method is an approach to evaluating sources that can be used in many contexts, considering the many types of information we encounter on the web in our lifetimes. The videos below outline "The Four Moves" and are all less than 5 minutes, if you are interested in learning more.
The first criteria for evaluation using the CRAAP Test is Currency.
You lose credibility when your audience knows more current information about your topic than you, so to ensure that you're finding information that fits within your time parameters, consider the following questions.
Next up: Relevance.
First A in CRAAP: Authority.
Authority is a measure of how much we trust the author, researcher, or organization that creates the information to be fair, unbiased, thorough, and accurate. How do we evaluate how trustworthy an author is? It's like you're interviewing them for a job; you want to know about the author's education, experience, and qualifications.
A for Accuracy.
If you present inaccurate information, you will lose credibility with your audience, but how do you know if the information you've found is accurate? You can start by asking yourself these questions:
The final criteria for evaluation is Purpose.
Determining purpose can sometimes be a tricky process. Start by asking yourself:
A single source can have more than one purpose. A good example of this is the Borowitz Report published by The New Yorker. These articles provide satirical commentary on current events. If you were evaluating this as a source for a paper or project, you'd likely determine that its purpose was to provide entertainment through satirical commentary, to inform readers of current events, and to promote a particular political perspective.
In summary, the CRAAP Test asks you to evaluate the Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose of an information source.
Many of the activities the CRAAP Test asks you to do involve seeking information about the same thing from multiple places and performing extra searches to double-check your source. This is called Lateral Reading, and Murphy Library has a guide called Evaluating Information Sources Critically that explains lateral reading further.
Fact-Checking websites:
Check it out: UW-Green Bay Libraries has the Rate My Source tool to help you determine whether your source is appropriate for college research.