What the heck is lateral research?

Well, normally we read articles from the top down, vertically. But we should try to get in the habit of having multiple tabs open in your web browser; this is the lateral, sideways aspect of research. And why these tabs? To deepen our research!

Okay, let's say you found an article and your prebunking skills have set off an internal flag in your noggin. Something tells you to slow down, don't share that, something ain't right here, reign in your research and think about this article for half a second. Great! That's have the battle right there!

Now pop open a new and head to Wikipedia

Woah! Wait! Wikipedia?

Yes, Wikipedia!

But I thought Wikipedia was evil and terrible and people could edit that and make it terrible and horrible and misleading and--

Slow down. Wikipedia isn't that bad. It's usually very basic information. Once upon a time, we'd get that information from encyclopedias, like Britannica or World Book. But instead of being confined to books on a shelf, Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopedia ever.

Oh, so it's just an encyclopedia.

Sure. Encyclopedias are great places to get started with research. And Wikipedia does have some great links and resources at the bottom you can use to further your research.

But what about the whole editing by evildoers?

Well, "evildoers" is a bit harsh. But yeah. It could be. Remember that lots of people edit these entries for good. So most changes are caught pretty quickly, especially on the more prominent topics, like country information. Also, you can see a history and discussion on a tab at the top to see what the editors are saying to each other.

So Wikipedia's not that bad?

Nope. Just remember that's it's a starting point. Use the citations at the bottom. And also look for key terms in your topic that you can use as new search terms to deepen your research.

Okay, so you have Wikipedia in a new window. Sweet. Look up the publication or author of what you found. This is a great guide for finding out about bias. For example, you might find an article that says that people are dying from driving small cars because people keep smashing into the tiny cars. When you research the publication, you might find that it's published by an auto company that only makes big trucks. See how they would want to mislead you? They want you to buy their big trucks, so they use disinformation to manipulate you.

So look up whoever published the article. And if you can't figure out who published it, consider it suspicious. Question the legitimacy if there's no clear publisher. Or if it's a made-at-home YouTube video with no credentials, then also be suspicious because anyone can publish anything. I mean, are you going to trust this guy? Or anyone who says, "Smash that like button"? Are they credible, or just trying to get likes?

Okay, you've looked into into the source in one tab. Now look look for more resources on this same topic. What are other news outlets or people saying? Do you get the same results? Do the results vary? This is what professional fact checkers do; they open new tabs and look to see what other people have to say.

And that's it! You're now a fact checker! You can use lateral research to verify your research! So go forth, use those tabs to research!