Information Literacy: Faculty

Minerva Research Initiative (Department of Defence) at the University of Tennessee. Results: It seems unlikely that 25,000 re-tweets could influence one percent of the electorate in isolation (Guess, et al., 2019; Allcott, et al., 2019), although this might be more plausible than presumed at first glance, given that only about four percent of viewed tweets result in re-retweets (Lee, et al., 2015), such that 25,000 re-tweets could imply about 500,000 exposures to those messages per week. It is more likely, however, that Twitter is just a subset of a larger disinformation campaign carried out on multiple social media platforms (Issac and Wakabayashi, 2017; Howard, et al., 2018), as well as spread through social contagion (Centola, 2010) and to other parts of the interconnected ‘media ecosystem’ including print, radio and television (Benkler, et al., 2018). In this way IRA disinformation can frame the debate, meaning many more people than those directly exposed can be affected (Jamieson, 2018).

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Toolkit was initially launched in 2017 by the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Advisory Board to support professional use and understanding of the Framework.

A pioneer in its field, the Center for Media Literacy (CML) is an educational organization that provides leadership, public education, professional development and evidence-based educational resources nationally and internationally. Dedicated to promoting and supporting media literacy education as a framework for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating and participating with media content, CML works to help citizens, especially the young, develop critical thinking and media production skills needed to live fully in the 21st century media culture. The ultimate goal is to make wise choices possible.

Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." 1 Information literacy also is increasingly important in the contemporary environment of rapid technological change and proliferating information resources. Because of the escalating complexity of this environment, individuals are faced with diverse, abundant information choices--in their academic studies, in the workplace, and in their personal lives. Information is available through libraries, community resources, special interest organizations, media, and the Internet--and increasingly, information comes to individuals in unfiltered formats, raising questions about its authenticity, validity, and reliability. In addition, information is available through multiple media, including graphical, aural, and textual, and these pose new challenges for individuals in evaluating and understanding it. The uncertain quality and expanding quantity of information pose large challenges for society. The sheer abundance of information will not in itself create a more informed citizenry without a complementary cluster of abilities necessary to use information effectively.

"Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a nonprofit research institute that conducts scholarly studies about students and how they find, evaluate, and select information for use in their courses and for solving information problems in everyday life."

The Stanford History Education Group is an award-winning research and development group that comprises Stanford faculty, staff, graduate students, post-docs, and visiting scholars. SHEG seeks to improve education by conducting research, working with school districts, and reaching directly into classrooms with free materials for teachers and students. SHEG’s Reading Like a Historian curriculum and Beyond the Bubble assessments have been downloaded more than 5 million times. SHEG 's current work focuses on how young people evaluate online content. In addition to our new assessments of Civic Online Reasoning, SHEG will soon be releasing materials to help students develop the skills needed to navigate our current digital landscape.

We are faced with massive information literacy problems, as shown by the complete inability of students and adults to identify fake stories, misinformation, disinformation, and other forms of spin. And what I predict is that if you are in higher education every conference you go to for the next year will have panel members making passionate Churchillian speeches on how we need more information literacy, to much applause and the occassional whoop. But which information literacy do we need? Do we need more RADCAB? Do we need more CRAAP? In reality, most literacies are heavily domain-dependent, and based not on skills, but on a body of knowledge that comes from mindful immersion in a context.