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We want to make sure we are using the most accurate and credible information available.
There is no black and white way to evaluate sources. All we can do is think critically about the information we have, and use different checklists to consider the sources we use.
“The methodology of positionality requires researchers to identify their own degrees of privilege through factors of race, class, educational attainment, income, ability, gender, and citizenship, among others … Doing so helps them understand how their way of making meaning, of framing research, within their conceptual universe is tied to their positionality within an unjust world.”
Marisa Elena Duate, Network Sovereignty
Historically, we have separated the research from the researcher and assumed that people could do research without their own viewpoint affecting their subject. But our viewpoints are why we choose to research certain things over others. Our life experiences shape what we research, and influence how we research them.
Positionality statements are more and more being included in the methods sections of research papers. They seek to locate the researcher in the following areas:
Lateral reading is "the act of verifying what you're reading as you're reading it" (Heich, 2020). As you read, you should know the context of what you are reading; who wrote it, and what position they wrote it from. The idea of lateral reading comes from a web-based perspective, where you should be opening tabs (lateral to the one you are reading), to verify information as you go. We can rely on the resource we are reading solely to verify the information within, we have to check it against other sources.
Adapted from Microsoft Co-Pilot GPT 4.0.