ALA Virtual 2020

With the uptick in COVID cases, the ALA annual meeting was virtual this year. This ended up working well for me since I wouldn't have been able to attend the in-person event. However, I was able to watch a lot of the webinars and felt like it was still a well-done event. 

My favorite presentation was Using “SIFT” to Teach Digital Literacy in a Democratic Society. It was a really well-done and very interesting presentation. Information literacy is something that I am very passionate about and I think that this new method is superior to the CRAPP method so often taught. The basic premise is teaching users how to use the internet to check the internet. So for instance, doing a reverse image search, checking well-known fact-checking sites like Snopes, and checking Google News. These are all really easy things that can be done to help users (though in the presentation they specifically talk about students) realize that not everything on the internet is reliable. 

News Literacy & Social Emotional Learning

I read this article, News Literacy Must Include Social Emotional Learning by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins in the School Library Journal that turned on a lightbulb for me in relation to information literacy. 

The article discusses the importance of talking about social-emotional learning (SEL) in the context of news literacy. Both SEL and information literacy are important topics, but when you couple them together it seems to help drive home the important fact that many "news" articles aren't actually correct or informative. What most people usually react to isn't the information in the article or post - what they tend to react to is the way the article makes them feel. Diving into the reasons so many people reflexively click and share inaccurate information is an important component to becoming information literate. Understanding that words can evoke emotions can help people, old and young, master information literacy.

The Backfire Bias

Having taken psychology courses in undergrad, I'm aware of biases and how we all fall prey to them. In an on-demand training I took called Overcoming Bias there was a section devoted to the backfire bias. The backfire bias is when people who already hold a strong belief, double down in their belief even when shown evidence to the contrary. Because I am very passionate about information literacy, I was interested in hearing ways to help overcome this bias. Dr. Michael Shermer, author and narrator of the training, gave six steps that may help when talking to people about difficult subjects. 

1. Keep emotions out of it. 
2. Discuss - don't attack. 
3. Listen carefully so that you can tell their belief back to them. 
4. Show respect. 
5. Acknowledge that you understand why someone might believe that. 
6. Try to show that changing facts does not mean changing their entire view of something else. 

Ethical Dilemmas with Modern Technology

In today's world, the ethical dilemmas faced by information professionals in the workplace are numerous. The evolution of modern technology has changed the way in which people interact with information, interact with each other and their environment. Describe two ethical scenarios concerning the designing or implementation of digital services in libraries. Based on your descriptions, please analyze these two scenarios with a careful consideration of the Code of Ethics and provide possible solutions for these two scenarios.

Dilemma 1: People have high expectations of libraries. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 78% of respondents felt that “public libraries help them find information that is trustworthy and reliable” (Geiger, 2017, para. 2). That is great news to hear. However, what happens when library users come to use the internet and do not seek out librarians for help with information retrieval?

We live in a world of fake news. From memes to questionable posts, from deepfakes to blatant lies - the internet is full of false information masquerading as truth. The issue of fake news is a vast topic that has its own set of ethical issues. What I’d like to discuss briefly, is the ethical dilemma of using technology to alert our users to information that is questionable. Even now, Facebook is trying to combat some of the issues within its social sphere by adding disclaimers to certain posts that it deems untrue or questionable (Heijmans, 2019). If users come into the library expecting trustworthy, high-quality, reliable information, how do we ensure we are giving it to them? Especially when there is no human interaction?

The technology exists now to add a Chrome extension that purports to fight fake news. Adding a chrome extension would be simple enough but do we need to? Should we have to? The ethical implications are, like every other response on the thread, varied and multifaceted.

It is our duty to give patrons “the highest level of service” (American Library Association, 2008) which includes the best, most correct information. However, adding a plugin or extension might violate users’ privacy.  We also may be unwittingly forcing the user to censor or limit their information results by adding the disclaimer. Also, it turns out that adding disclaimers to fake news may make people “more willing to believe other stories…[e]ven if those additional untagged stories also turn out to be false” (Dizikes, 2020).

Information literacy is becoming more and more important. As librarians, workshops and classes on how to apply critical thinking skills and tools to evaluate websites should be shared to help combat fake or questionable content. But as Orick (2000) states, the internet is so quickly changing that the validity of the content might change from day-to-day.

Dilemma 2: Online learning is a convenient and popular technology that has really gained traction within the last decade. As the UNT Library Science program can attest, face-to-face is not necessary to learn a topic or to engage with peers. Many online courses use web-based software (e.g. Canvas, Blackboard) that allow users to login, interact, and work from anywhere with an internet connection. However, this software has ways to mine data from its users. It can track students’ clicks, time on page, who they’ve interacted with, files uploaded, files downloaded, and more. From a business perspective, this mined data is gold. It can help show correlations between students receiving A's and the time they spend on the software. It can help show areas that are being underutilized or not used at all that can then be eliminated from future budgets. However, as Jones and Salo (2018) explain, the software and the data that are able to be mined have ethical implications in the field of library and information science, especially when the same set of data mining standards are used in mining the library’s service.

Knowing which actions and services a patron uses can be beneficial to the university. Having that knowledge in quantifiable measures with the ability to provide correlations and statistically relevant data can help the university gain revenue and focus on areas where they may have been lacking before. However, patrons have the right to privacy. The webpages they visited, the clicks they made, and the articles they read should not be saved and put on a server waiting to be analyzed later. Especially without identifiers removed and especially not without patron’s consent. The duty to keep our patrons’ information private should be a top priority. Whether they are using a public, academic, or another type of library they should be comfortable in knowing that their information will not be sold or used for means in which they have no say.

References

American Library Association. (2008). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/tools/ethics

Dizikes, P. (2020, March 2). The catch to putting warning labels on fake news. MIT News. Retrieved from http://news.mit.edu/2020/warning-labels-fake-news-trustworthy-0303

Geiger. A. W. (2017, August 30). Most Americans – especially Millennials – say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information. Pew Center Research Fact Tank. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/30/most-americans-especially-millennials-say-libraries-can-help-them-find-reliable-trustworthy-information/

Heijmans, P. (2019, November 30). Facebook adds disclaimer to post that Singapore deems false. Bloomberg.Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-29/singapore-orders-facebook-to-correct-blog-s-false-statements

Jones, K., & Salo, D. (2018). Learning analytics and the academic library: Professional ethics commitments at a crossroads. College & Research Libraries, 79(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.3.304

Orick, J. (2000). The virtual library: Changing Roles and ethical challenges for librarians. International Information & Library Review, 32(3/4), 313-624. DOI: 10.1080/10572317.2000.10762520

The Importance of Information Literacy

Once one sees the damage and distrust that “fake news” articles produce, one can see the importance of teaching information literacy. Nowadays it’s not only important to teach people how to read but it’s also important that they are able to think critically about what they read. Creating new memes and infographics can be easy ways for information professionals to help the public combat the spreading of “fake news” (Ireland, 2018). However, infographics of flowcharts, no matter how pretty, may still be too complicated and time consuming for some patrons to use on a daily basis.

Mandalios (2013) suggests using the RADAR approach. The acronym stands for Relevance, Authority, Date, Appearance, and Reason. The acronym and the word itself are easy for students to remember. Teaching students and patrons alike on how to use the RADAR approach can help staunch some “fake news” sharing. Mandalios explains that the approach can be customized for age-appropriateness. Using something like RADAR to teach children at an early age to be critical of all the information they pass, will be a crucial endeavor for information professionals in the years to come. 

References

Ireland, S. (2018). Fake news alerts: Teaching news literacy skills in a meme world. The

Reference Librarian, 59(3), 122-128. DOI:  10.1080/02763877.2018.1463890

Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470–478. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889 

The Spreading of Fake News

Since the 2016 Presidential election, it seems that the term “fake news” has become a common phrase in everyday parlance to describe situations, articles, or stories that aren’t true. The term has become so ubiquitous that many use it facetiously in everyday conversations when they don’t agree or believe something. However, “fake news” is an important topic when talking about news, politics, and science and is an important topic in the information science field.

Fake news is any content that purposefully ignores, misrepresents, or invents facts (Ireland, 2018). To really dissect “fake news” Wardle (2017) divides it into seven categories which include satire or parody; misleading, imposter, fabricated, or manipulated content; false connection; and false context. With its ambiguous and complicated definition, it’s no wonder that spotting fake news is a serious endeavor that many of the general public do not perform while utilizing things like social media.

Though some form of “fake news” has been around since the advent of information, its rampant usage and timeliness across social media make it an important topic for discussion. With today’s technology, “fake news” is so easily created by bots and shared by so many that it has created an atmosphere of distrust (Zhang & Ghorbani, 2019). Learning how to spot “fake news” and search for information from reliable resources will continue to be an important job of information science professionals as technology advances. The work being done now by organizations such as PolitiFact and Snopes.com only work when users seek out the truth of their information. Though automated programs are being created to help stem the onslaught of “fake news” the best medicine is still going to be human teachers training audiences on how to detect, deflect, and suppress the malicious intents. 

References

Ireland, S. (2018). Fake news alerts: Teaching news literacy skills in a meme world. The

Reference Librarian, 59(3), 122-128. DOI:  10.1080/02763877.2018.1463890

Wardle, C. (2017, February 16). Fake news. It’s complicated. First Draft. Retrieved from https://firstdraftnews.org/latest/fake-news-complicated

Zhang, X., & Ghorbani, A. A. (2019). An overview of online fake news: Characterization,

detection, and discussion. Information Processing and Management, 57(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2019.03.004