Yay! More Verified! Honestly, the more I read this book the more I realize that I’ve been such a passive Internet user. Before this course, I had never thought about things such as lateral reading, which is the process of reading around an article. What that means is basically researching not the words in the article, but its author, its organization, and so on. This is discussed in chapter 4, and the authors continue the discussion by simply saying “Get off the Page!” By simply doing a little more research into whatever author or organization wrote the article, it’s so much easier to gauge the validity of the article and its information.
As the authors mention, reading an article and judging its accuracy or validity isn’t like reading a book. With a book, you’d read vertically – meaning you’d read the text itself to decide if the information contained is accurate. When talking about articles online, we must adapt our thinking and our reading to the medium. We must read laterally. The way I like to think of it – and the way the authors describe it – is like a spider’s web. Many strands connect together to create an intricate pattern. I wrote in my notes that “to understand one part of the Internet, such as a website, you must interact with its other parts. Isolating a website and trusting that one source doesn’t benefit you.” If you find an article and want to know if it’s valid or accurate, why trap yourself in that particular article? That article doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s possible — and recommended — that you open another tab and research the organization or author, for example.
One of my favorite things that the authors say about lateral reading is that it puts you in control. However, there are some ways that you can also help yourself gain control over how you use and interact with the Internet. The authors mention “click restraint,” which calls back to the first step of SIFT: stop. After you type your search into the search bar and hit enter, stop and look, but don’t click on anything yet. I like this process because instead of immediately jumping into the metaphorical deep end of the Google pool, you step into the shallow end and get a feel of what you’re getting yourself into. The authors call this feeling the “vibe” of the search engine results page. Being able to take control of what you believe on the Internet is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially in this day and age of AI and advertisers being more stealthy about ads. Lateral reading is just one of the ways the authors mention to do this. Overall, though, being able to exercise your autonomy as an Internet user is increasingly important. Verified as a whole teaches people how to be more careful online, yes, but it also gives us skills on how to be more independent when using the Internet.
Comments
3 responses to “Controlling the Internet & Not Letting it Control You”
I completely agree—it’s wild how much we’ve been passive internet users without even realizing it. I love your spider’s web analogy! It really captures how interconnected everything is online. Like, every article is just one strand, but it’s connected to the author’s reputation, the organization’s goals, the sources they cite, etc. The more you explore those connections, the clearer the full picture becomes. It’s kind of empowering, honestly. We’re not just passive consumers anymore; we’re taking control and holding these sources accountable.
I really enjoyed these chapters. I like that you said it is important to not get trapped in an article. I feel like that happens all the time. We get sucked into the vortex of analyzing the article, the About page, the style, the argument, the authors, etc. and never think to go elsewhere! Its a ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ moment for sure. Before, I would always look up the author on a different webpage, but I rarely looked up the website or organization itself. I wonder if anyone else does that as well. I feel as if people feel lost in the mass of information that is out there, and that is why they rely so much on their own judgement instead of feeling overwhelmed or a lack of control by jumping into the wide web. But we shouldn’t feel that way! We can have control over our internet experiences. Great post!
Verified is a really solid book. I always thought of myself as a good internet user, able to sort through the good versus the bad, right? But I realized the same thing that you did. I’m a passive internet user! It’s honestly a little exhausting to always be on the lookout for misinformation, and it does lead to a trust compression. You catch it once, twice, three times, and it becomes a question of cynicism or skepticism. In one of my other classes we talked about cynical media literacy or skeptical media literacy. The cynics treat what they read with cautious eye, whereas skeptics tend to disbelieve everything they read. With Verified, I noticed that I had been steadily becoming more of a skeptic than anything else, and that basic research can be overall quite helpful in ending that skepticism.