Cybersecurity (POL): Evaluation and Building an Argument

Lateral Reading is a practice that validates information by comparing and fact checking content between sources --hence you are reading laterally. Some lateral reading practices.

• Trace your source and it's sources. Can you tell if there is copying from other sources? This is especially crucial for online information
• Do a citation search in Google Scholar. In Google Scholar, put the article or book title in the search box. You will see who has cited your source. These can also be useful sources for your research. Also an article or book written in the last year or two may not have been cited by others yet.
• If your information comes from a website make sure to check the about page. If the site has no about page, that is a bad sign.
• "Follow the money." Find out if the study was financed by an organization or company. Look for boards of directors, etc. Sometimes outside funders put parameters on research, causing the conclusions to be irrelevant or inaccurate.

Other evaluation techniques that may not apply in every instance.

• Verify the authors credentials. Are they credible? Do they have the qualifications to talk about the subject. Most academic publications provide short author bios. Is the author affiliated with an organization or think tank that might suggest bias? The information is useable, but you need to understand why the author is in a position to know about the topic. Some newspaper and news magazine articles have a byline, while others will staff writers as authors.
• Evaluate the tone of the article. Is it scholarship or propaganda? Does the article describe its limits of the argument or are there excessive claims of certainty? Are contradictory facts presented or surpassed?  Identify potential propaganda or persuasion. Look for solid research based on evidence. Even news sources discuss evidence by quoting interviewees or investigating those who are involved.
• Identify the audience and the purpose for the research. As discussed on the home page of this guide, writers must speak to different audiences, whether general or academic. 
• Browse the references list and look up some of the references. Has your author placed their research in the conversation with other scholars? If in doubt look up some of those research articles.
• Is something left out of the article? You will have done a certain amount of research and know what the main topics of discussion are in the field, or in the general press. The author can disagree with other authors, but they all need to be "conversing' on the same topic.
• Check the currency of the information. Currency may not matter in some cases, but make sure you know how old the information is.

Once you have a critical mass of evidence, try to align the different kinds of documents together Do the journal articles and policy papers line up with the news sources? If they don't, then you have a hole in your research and you must look for other sources to bridge that gap.