Lateral reading: doing a quick initial evaluation of a website by spending a little time on the website and more time reading what others say about it. Sometimes you can find out more about a website by leaving the site itself.
Click restraint: don’t immediately click on the first search results. Scan a search results page and look at things like the title, source description, and featured sections, before deciding what sources to examine.
This short video from the Stanford History Education Group illustrates the importance of click restraint and why you shouldn’t assume that the first search results are necessarily the most reliable or relevant ones.
This video explains why lateral reading is important.
This video is about investigating a source.
