Tuesday, December 6, 2016

‘Fake news’: library scholars urge ‘metaliteracy’

Cynthia M. Parkhill's Bitstrips avatar accesses information via smartphone while standing on city street next to newspaper box
Information via Internet. Image created with Bitstrips
Implications for digital-literacy education, more critically important than ever: Citing the role of “fake news” in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, library and information science scholars Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi Jaccobson argue that it isn’t enough to be able to search and retrieve information from the online landscape. They advocate instead for what they term “metaliteracy,” an ability to make sense and critically evaluate this vast amount of information.

1 comment:

  1. Hannah Byrd Little's reaction to the proliferation of "fake news" was motivation to teach her st​​udents deeper information-literacy skills. Writing for Knowledge Quest (Journal of the American Association of School Librarians), Byrd shares study results indicating that students "all the way to college age" don't recognize the basics of evaluating a source.

    Little adds, sharing a link to "Snapchat" basic training courtesy of NPR, "It is no longer effective to say, 'Don't get your news from Snapchat.' Instead, we must teach students to verify this news and know how to cite the information." http://knowledgequest.aasl.org/news-or-not/

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