16 Lateral vs vertical reading – Lecture for COM 1305

Up until this point, we’ve been talking a lot about how we know things and how we know if we should believe things. We looked at some common ways people know things – and the problems inherent in those everyday ways of knowing. We looked to “science” as a superior way of knowing (not surprisingly, as a researcher and university professor, I am firmly on #teamscience). We talked about the problems with science because, yes, science has its problems (“It’s not an exact science!” “It’s not a perfect science!” I’m here all week!). We talked about science broadly, but considering that this a class about social scientific research method…in communication…we focused a lot on social scientific research in communication (spoiler alert – just kidding, or at least I hope that’s not a surprise to you).

From there, we really started to dive into our quest, thinking hard about primary and secondary research, where to find it, how to evaluate it by outlet (journal), author, and publication date. We talked about the first of our, “hmm, ok, WHY was this written” elements (for translation? for some corporation?). We got into the process of having information presented, working our way back to the original primary research, and deconstructing from there. We’re going to spend a lot of time this semester examining more of these elements for review.

In this unit, we’re going to start looking at journal articles section by section and deconstructing them. But first, we’re going to talk about lateral and vertical reading. This chapter will teach you information consumption strategies that will help you determine if you should believe it, even if you can’t figure out how to find your way back to the original published primary research.

Here’s what your student textbook authors have to say:

Lateral vs vertical reading

As the internet has become more and more widely used in our society, so has the concept of misinformation in news. Another term that recently gained popularity is “fake news.” Even extremely professional-looking websites and articles may contain misinformation. Sometimes, these websites and journals have biased authors, or maybe they were funded by groups with a particular interest – be it political or otherwise. So, how can we as consumers filter out the misinformation effectively?

Vertical and Lateral Reading are two different ways in which one can read articles and verify if it is misinformation or fact. Let’s first define what each is…

Vertical Reading
This would be the typical style of reading most people are used to, including:

• Checking how professional a site looks
• Reading the entire article and deciding if the information sounds correct
• Checking the citations

Lateral Reading
This type of reading is more effective to weed out misinformation, such as:

• Researching the name of the website
• Researching the author and their affiliation(s)
• Researching the company and who owns the website
• Checking 3 to 5 sources before making  judgment

You can learn more about lateral vs. vertical reading by clicking this article from Teachers College Record.

This whole misinformation spread thing is a pretty big deal, and part of why it’s so important that you become competent information consumers. Don’t believe us? Check out this study about how mass media disseminates news and how effective it is at spreading misinformation:

Class lecture 10.6.2020- Tim Arnold, Information Literacy Librarian, University of Iowa

Part 1:

Part 2:

Presentation Slides: U7-lateral vs vertical reading

Unit 6: Don’t be bashful- interrogate that primary research!

• • Lateral vs vertical reading
  • Basic vs Applied Research
  • The Dreaded Ologies — An Introduction (with a side of paradigm)