ORCID
Winn W. Wasson 0000-0001-5117-6813
Document Type
Conference Document
Date
4-13-2021
Keywords
information literacy, misinformation, media literacy
Language
English
Disciplines
Library and Information Science
Description/Abstract
After the advent of widespread coordinated disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, librarians stepped up to combat misinformation and disinformation in their communities and the larger information ecosystem by applying principles and best practices of information literacy education. However, librarians walk a fine line on how to educate audiences to become critical consumers of information, particularly on politically sensitive topics. It is all too easy to lose audience members’ trust and receptiveness to our message when a component or the entirety of our presentation challenges the beliefs of participants too forcefully. When we teach information literacy sessions to students, we often talk to them about how to tell “good sources” from “bad sources”. However, when discussing misinformation and disinformation in the news and on social media (including “fake news”, as the term was initially defined), the political sensitivity of the topics requires that librarians find different, more subtle approaches to encouraging critical media literacy that educate students and other community members without provoking political defensiveness.
Recommended Citation
Wasson, Winn W., "“(Mis)Information Creation as a Process”: A Method for Teaching Critical Media Literacy Designed to Work with Students of All Political Persuasions" (2021). Libraries' and Librarians' Publications. 199.
https://surface.syr.edu/sul/199
Recorded presentation for ACRL 2021 contributed paper "(Mis)information Creation as a Process"
wasson_acrl2021_presentation.pdf (1164 kB)
Slides for presentation for ACRL 2021 contributed paper "(Mis)information Creation as a Process"
Source
submission
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Additional Information
Contributed paper and online presentation for the Association of College and Research Libraries 2021 Conference.