5.2.1.4: Missing the Mark
- Page ID
- 139195
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Students in this study confirmed what a decade of PIL research suggests: Their college assignments discourage them from working with information outside the realm of traditional scholarship. Moreover, their courses do not address the significant social and ethical questions raised53 about the workings of influential information systems on the public sphere. This is happening at a time when falsehoods proliferate and trust in truth-seeking institutions is being undermined. Even the very existence of truth itself has come into question. The classroom, however, seems strangely removed from this rising “post-truth” wave beating against the shores of our shared reality.
In PIL’s 2018 news engagement survey, eight in 10 students agreed news is “necessary in a democracy,” but journalism, most said, had fallen short of their idealistic standards of accuracy, independence, and fairness.54 For them, staying current often meant navigating a minefield of misinformation, commercial interests, clickbait, “fast news” from social media, and political manipulation. Finding reliable information beyond the filter bubbles they knew constrained what they saw in searches and social media required work on their part. Strikingly, more than a third (36%) said “fake news” had made them distrust the credibility of any news at all.55
The fact that a large proportion of students, who are bombarded by news on a daily basis, do not trust any of it indicates a large gap between the information literacy skills they practice for courses and their grasp of our current information environment. Particularly concerning is the fact that many students reported they were much more careful about selecting quality information for course assignments than they were for their personal consumption.56 In many cases, students reported they were motivated to dig deeper when a news story piqued their interest, but otherwise relied on well-informed friends or scanning a smattering of headlines in news digests to keep on top of events.
References
- See for example, Mark Bergen (2 April 2019), “YouTube executives ignored warnings, letting toxic videos run rampant.” Bloomberg, https:// www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant
- Alison J. Head, John Wihbey, P. Takis Metaxas, Margy MacMillan, and Dan Cohen (16 October 2018), How students engage with news: Five takeaways for educators, journalists, and librarians, Project Information Literacy, www.projectinfolit.org/uploa.../5/4/27541717/ newsreport.pdf, 14.
- Op. cit. Head, et al. 2018, How students engage with news: Five takeaways for educators, journalists, and librarians, 15.
- Op. cit. Head, et al. 2019, “Across the great divide.”