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Hi I’m John Green, welcome to Crash Course
Navigating Digital Information.
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So, today, we are going to learn one of the
most important skills of 21st century life,
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and I don’t say that lightly.
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So, you know my name and that this is an episode
of Crash Course.
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But there’s a lot that doesn’t tell you.
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It doesn’t tell you, for instance, that
Crash Course is a product of Complexly, a
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company owned by my brother and me and funded
partly by support from patreon, partly by
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advertisements, and partly by grants from
organizations.
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It also doesn’t tell you who works on the
show--a large team of producers, editors,
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writers, illustrators, and more.
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You’re looking at some of them now.
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[camera pans to crew behind the camera]
And as I mentioned in the previous videos,
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the folks at MediaWise also helped us make
this video.
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MediaWise was created with support from Google,
and it’s a collaboration between the Poynter
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Institute, a non-profit journalism school,
and the Stanford History Education Group,
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a university-based research group.
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All of this is helpful to know when navigating
digital information, because understanding
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where information came from helps us to understand
if it’s reliable.
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How do you even find a source in a world where
no one has to cite sources, and what citations
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exist are perpetually disappearing?
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Well, to quote my friends Rhett and Link,
Let’s talk about that.[1]
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INTRO
So, information doesn’t just appear, even
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if it’s automated or driven by an algorithm.
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A twitter bot, for instance, is not a person--but
they were created by people, as are the algorithms
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that declare what topics are trending in online
discourse.
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So all information is produced by someone,
but it’s also produced for a purpose.
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Like, newspapers are created by journalists
and editors to inform the public about things
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editors think they should know.
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But of course, they also have to sell subscriptions
and advertisements to support themselves.
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Advertisements are created by companies to
convince customers to buy or use their products.
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Movies and books are created to entertain,
or to stir up important cultural conversations,
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or both.
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The lines between these motives, of course,
are not always clear.
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Advertisements often feel informative, and
sometimes seek to be informative-- like those
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medicine ads that list 143 side effects in
10 seconds, because they are required to do
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so by law.
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And while journalism should seek to inform,
journalists are humans, and they make choices
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both about what to cover and how to cover
it, choices we may not agree with.
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Movies and books may exist to entertain and
enlighten, but they can also exist to sell
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things--it is no coincidence, for instance,
that everyone in The Fault in Our Stars movie
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uses Apple products.
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So the first question we ask is who made this
and why?
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And we mustn’t oversimplify the answers.
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Like, I wrote The Fault in Our Stars because
I was inspired by my friend Esther, and also
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because I wanted to explore whether a short
life can be a full life, and also because
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I thought people would read it--and pay for
it.
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The book was also a product of my editor and
Penguin Random House, my publisher.
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They also thought people would read and buy
it.
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None of those motivations negates any of the
others.
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But of course, understanding who is actually
behind a project can be difficult, especially
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online.
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I mean, “catfishing” is now a verb because
it’s so easy to pretend to be what you’re
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not.
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The “Stop City-Funded Internet” campaign
is a good example of what I mean.
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So, in early 2018, the city of West Plains,
Missouri was working on a taxpayer-funded
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municipal internet service project.
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If successful, it would provide residents
with cheaper high-speed internet.
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And while the city was working on this plan,
a website for the “Stop City-Funded Internet”
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campaign popped up.[2] It claimed to be a
grassroots community of local fiscal conservatives
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against the plan.
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The campaign site looked pretty sleek and
professionally-designed.
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It had a clear, stated mission and high-quality
photography.
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Oh, and also, a list of all the ways municipal
internet service projects have failed.
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And just by looking at the website, you wouldn’t
have been able to tell who was really behind
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that campaign, because it didn’t name names
or list its leadership.
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But in the end, someone did discover the brains
behind the operation.
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It was…of course...
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Fidelity Communications, a local commercial
internet provider that didn’t want to lose
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customers.
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And the only reason they came clean[3] was
because a Missouri man noticed the file name
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of the site’s logo had “Fidelity” in
it.[4]
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But most of the time, we don’t need to search
source code to know more about who’s sharing
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the information we’re consuming.
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We just need to read differently.
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So, we tend to read web sites like we read
books or articles: we start at the top of
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the page, look at the title, and scroll down
from there.
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We read vertically.
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And many websites look really legitimate when
you’re reading vertically, because you’re
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only seeing what their creators want you to
see.
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And creators know what we think make websites
look authoritative -- a well-designed logo,
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references and citations, professional photography,
no grammatical errors or typos.
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And so when you read vertically, it is often
impossible to distinguish reliable information
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from unreliable.
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But introducing other strategies into your
reading -- like looking elsewhere for additional
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information -- can help you find out a lot
more.
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When you’re on a new website, instead of
staying put and taking their word for it,
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you should just... leave.
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Open a new tab and start looking for more
information.
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That’s called lateral reading.
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It’s lateral because, instead of moving
up and down, you’re moving from tab to tab.
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Basically, what I’m saying is that when
your browser looks like this, it can actually
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be good news.
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Like, here’s a website from the American
Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
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This page from 2018[5] is about a back-and-forth
in the federal government over regulating
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internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon,
and AT&T.
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Regulating those providers could include setting
the prices and rates for their services or
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whether they’re allowed to collect tolls
from websites or content creators, among other
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things.
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Apparently, ALEC is against government regulation
of internet service providers.
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So we want to know who ALEC is.
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We can tell a few things by looking at their
website.
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Namely that this site is apparently /not/
run by Hailey Baldwin’s famous uncle.
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Also the site does have a dot-org web address,
which is often used by nonprofits.
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The logo looks serious and kind of fancy.
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The website is easy to use.
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ALEC’s about page says it’s “America’s
largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership
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organization of state legislators dedicated
to the principles of limited government, free
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markets, and federalism.”
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Its board of directors page lists many U.S.
representatives and senators.
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And if we stay on this page, it all seems...
you know, kind of boring and standard.
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But if you open a new tab and search ALEC
-- ok, yeah, the first results are Alec Baldwin.
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Hailey’s uncle.
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But below that, and below ALEC’s website,
lies their Wikipedia page and a website called
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ALEC exposed dot org.
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Towards the bottom of the first page of search
results, there are news articles by websites
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like The Atlantic and The Guardian.
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These say that corporations and nonprofits
are also members of ALEC.
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We learn that one of ALEC’s stated goals
is to bring corporate leaders and legislators
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together so they can craft laws.
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A search for “ALEC members” shows that
AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have all been members.[6]
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Which means the original article about internet
regulation has some, you know, big conflicts
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of interest.
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Internet service providers obviously have
a huge financial incentive to fight regulation.
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But that article doesn’t disclose that.
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So in this case, lateral reading helped us
find out who’s really behind information:
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a huge group of lawmakers working with big
corporations towards their common interests.
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All right, so now that you understand the
idea of lateral reading, you may be wondering
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where you should go when you open that next
tab.
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There are plenty of online sources you can
use to look into different organizations and
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authors.
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They may not be perfect, but they’re a good
starting point if you’re just trying to
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learn a little bit about a source of information.
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Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
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Newspapers can be a good place to start.
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Some of them have been around for decades
or even centuries.
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They have tons of information.
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Traditionally, newspapers provided written
information about current events printed daily
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or weekly.
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Today, many newspapers have turned into digital
media companies that publish news online daily
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in a variety of formats.
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Some focus on international or national news
and others focus on local news.
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Magazines and digital news sites are useful
for lateral reading, too.
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However it’s important to note that many
online news organizations have their own points
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of view.
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Sometimes these are explicit liberal or conservative
political leanings.
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But sometimes they’re much harder to pinpoint,
like a mashup of their contributors’ own
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interests and perspectives.
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Like, a website written specifically about
comics for and by women might cover the new
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Captain Marvel trailer differently
than a site with all male writers would, for
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instance.
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We’ll talk more about authorial perspective
in our next episode.
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Fact-checking websites can also be an excellent
resource.
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Sites like Snopes.com and Politifact.com are
well-respected fact-checking sites created
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by researchers and journalists
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with the goal of fact-checking:
articles,
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public statements,
and even social media posts.
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Of course that doesn’t mean they’re never
wrong,
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because they’re also created by humans,
but they do strive to be right.
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But like every resource, fact checking websites
are just one tool in the tool box.
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There is no magic arbiter of truth.
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Thanks, Thought Bubble!
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So, to reiterate, no newspaper or news site
is infallible.
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All of this is created by humans, and humans
make mistakes constantly.
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All of us.
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Our modern media landscape is very difficult
to navigate and that has sowed distrust between
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the public and the quote unquote mainstream
media.
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But I think there are two important things
to remember here.
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First, “the media” does not exist.
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It’s not a monolith.
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There are no secret meetings between every
reporter and editor and photographer in the
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world about what to report.
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It is a very large and diverse industry made
up of individuals with vastly different viewpoints.
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But, secondly, it is possible to take those
different viewpoints into account when reading
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laterally and checking information for yourself.
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Now, having waded into controversial waters,
I’m about to dive into them.
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There’s another resource you can use while
reading laterally.
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One you’ve been told not to use by teachers
and parents and other adults.
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But I’m not like them, I’m young, and...what’s
that Stan?
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Oh.
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Apparently I am like them.
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Nonetheless, I am here to tell you that you
SHOULD USE WIKIPEDIA.
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Wikipedia can be a very good place to start
your research.
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You’ve definitely been told at some point
that it’s an unreliable source or that anyone
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can just edit at a whim.
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Wikipedia can be wrong.
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It often is.
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Many articles CAN be edited by anyone, but
Wikipedia is also the largest general reference
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work on the web, and its articles /are/ subject
to editing standards.
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Some of them are quite rigorous, in fact.
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So it can be a great place to find a general
overview of a topic.
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Now, not every article meets Wikipedia’s
editorial standards--as many articles say
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/above/ the article--but the ones that do
are well-sourced and carefully written, and
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if you scroll down to the bottom of any wikipedia
page, you should find citations that work.
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We’re gonna talk about Wikipedia in a future
episode, but for now I just wanna say this:
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There is no, like, single source on the Internet,
or off the Internet for that matter
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There’s no secret way to understand the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
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truth.
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I think we sometimes forget this, so I want
to state it clearly: Information is made by
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people--flawed, biased, imperfect people.
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But sometimes we conclude that because no
source is inherently objective, all information
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must be equally unreliable, and that is dead
wrong.
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No matter what you’re thinking about or
trying to learn about, understanding who is
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sharing the information, and why, can help
you to evaluate what you’re reading and
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place it in its proper context.
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And lateral reading can really help with that.
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I know it feels like extra work--the entering
of search terms, looking through sources,
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and so on--but I’ve been trying this for
the last several weeks, and it has genuinely
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worked for me.
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Instead of asking why read laterally, I think
we should consider what we lose when we don’t
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read laterally, when we passively scroll through
information feeds and accept what seems true
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and dismiss what seems wrong.
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Reading that way gives misinformation and
disinformation more power.
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It allows people to hijack your consciousness,
and it also makes you part of the problem.
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The world wide web demands we utilize a new
kind of reading to evaluate information, one
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that is very different from how we read books
or newspapers.
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There’s no beginning and no end to the web.
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Vertical reading doesn’t work because it’s
not vertical.
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It’s a web.
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So, we often need to leave individual websites
to understand that website...by using other
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websites.
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It will get simpler over time and with practice.
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Once, you didn’t know how to read vertically.
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So, we’re going to keep practicing.
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I’ll see you next time.
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For this series, Crash Course has teamed up
with MediaWise, a project out of the Poynter
00:12:56
Institute that was created with support from
Google.
00:12:59
The Poynter Institute is a non-profit journalism
school.
00:13:04
The goal of MediaWise is to teach students
how to assess the accuracy of information
00:13:10
they encounter online.
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The MediaWise curriculum was developed by
the Stanford History Education Group based
00:13:15
on civic online reasoning research that they
began in 2015.
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If you’re interested in learning more about
MediaWise and fact-checking, you can visit
00:13:23
@mediawisetips on Instagram.
00:13:25
________________
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4PooiX37Pld1T8J5SYT-SQ
00:13:26
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180129214112/https://stopcityfundedinternet.com/
[3]https://www.westplainsdailyquill.net/features/business/article_589ec380-18a4-11e8-b515-43970aabc869.html
00:13:27
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcDPOvFdUcE
[5]https://www.alec.org/article/democrats-hope-to-restore-heavy-handed-internet-regulations-through-senate-vote/
00:13:28
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_American_Legislative_Exchange_Council
