Evaluating Online Information: Research and Disinformation Series

Kate Magsamen-Conrad

Bonus Unit: (Colloquially) How do we assess what we know?

8 Evaluating Online Information: Research and Disinformation Series

Research and Disinformation Series: a series of seven videos that explore the problem of disinformation and how to deal with it as an information consumer. Created in partnership with the University of Iowa Libraries and the Rhetoric Department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Research and Disinformation – Episode 1: Defining our Terms

“In this video, we define four important terms that are essential to our discussion: fact, opinion, bias, and disinformation.”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 2: Bias is a Red Herring

“In this video, we delve deeper into the concept of bias in order to distinguish it from disinformation.”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 3: The Dangers of Disinformation

“In this video, we consider historical examples of disinformation to illustrate who uses it, why, and how they use it. We also consider the problem of contemporary disinformation within this historical context.”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 4: Expertise Matters

“In this video, we suggest that relying on expert information can be an antidote to disinformation. We discuss why people rely on experts and how expert information is created.”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 5: Lateral Reading (part 1)

“In this video, we discuss how to differentiate trustworthy information from untrustworthy information on the open internet using a critical reading strategy called ‘lateral reading.'”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 6: Lateral Reading (part 2)

“In this video, we use the lateral reading techniques that we discussed in our last video on lateral reading to demonstrate how to research the credibility of unfamiliar online sources.”

Research and Disinformation – Episode 7 Final Thoughts

“In this video, we consider a real-life example of a person encountering disinformation online and we use this example to tie together the concepts we discussed throughout this series. We end by suggesting that lateral reading can be an effective tool to keep us from falling into cynicism.”

This information was brought to you by…

The wonderful Timothy Arnold, Librarian Extraordinaire, who left the university of Iowa in January 2023. Timothy was a guest in Doc’s methods lecture every semester from 2018-2022 and we wanted to be sure to capture his wisdom in case it left the UI library websites. This chapter came directly from the YouTube playlist, and the paragraph is from the University Libraries page, “Evaluating Online Information.”

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