By Shannon Horton, DMS Collaborative Teacher I considered dramatically ripping up a CRAP test poster the other day while working with a class of 7th-grade researchers. It definitely would have made a point. What point might be up for debate, but the one I wanted to make was that we need to update our media literacy skills.
The world has caught on to our little CRAP test and now many websites easily pass that really shouldn’t. We find an “about us” page that boasts the organization is non-profit and non-partisan, a board of directors with slick sounding titles, and domains that are .org and .edu and think we’re in the clear. For example, The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) was brought to my attention by a high school student last year who was wondering if it was really as good as it looked. Applying the CRAP test yielded positive results - just check out their slick and convincing “about us” page. This student, though, noticed loaded language and biased statements that surfaced after closely reading several articles. We did a quick search in Google to find several warnings about CIS, including this one from Wikipedia: According to Wikipedia, “The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton.” This technique is called “lateral reading” because you’re investigating a source by leaving the page, opening a new tab and searching for outside information about the organization and author. Vertical reading, or the CRAP test, is also important but can no longer be used in isolation. Our Chrome extensions, NewsGuard and Media Bias Fact Check, are tools to use when reading laterally, as is Wikipedia. I’m actually glad the poster is still intact because I think we can alter the CRAP test in a way that allows for this type of investigation. The P currently stands for purpose and can now include the question, “Who is behind this information?” This question will hopefully prompt all of us to leave the page we’re evaluating to see what other credible sources are saying.
4 Comments
Denise
2/5/2020 12:24:35 pm
I am preaching to the choir...but thank you for helping our students be responsible researchers that look for accurate information. I think you need to make it the LaCRAP test, and add in the lateral reading. :-)
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Sarah
2/5/2020 05:25:00 pm
I love it: LaCRAP!
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Sarah Zbornik
2/5/2020 12:43:55 pm
Thank you so much for helping our students decide what is a worthy site to research - such difficult and important work. It is a great reminder for me when researching to determine "who exactly is behind this information."
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Zachary Fromm
2/6/2020 07:16:29 am
Lateral Reading is an excellent tool Sam Wineburg introduced me to in his book "Why Teach History When it's On Your Phone". We can no longer vet a source in solitary. We must ask deeper and thicker questions about the origin, purpose, authenticity, and history of the website and/or author by moving out of the source. In a sense, we must corroborate the source before we corroborate the sources as we discover more about a topic or historical event. This takes time, but it's imperative and necessary. Making it second nature to students is essential.
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