Bias and the Internet: The Role of Libraries and Information Literacy
Few people still view the internet as a death blow to libraries, but many are unsure under what terms they coexist. When libraries first opened their stacks to an increasingly educated public, librarians quickly found that the system of organization that made so much sense to them made none to their patrons. When librarians rose to the challenge of helping their patrons interpret this system, reference as a service was born (Tyckoson, 2011). During a time when the public was becoming increasingly educated and information was proliferating, the librarian’s role was to provide access to and help patrons use the resources (Tyckoson, 2011). This role has not changed. What has changed is the idea of the librarian as a gatekeeper to a world of information that their profession has curated. We still have excellent collections of books and subscription databases that match our users’ needs. But we also have the internet, where most of our students live, interact, and at least start (in some cases end) their research. The internet is a varied and often polarized place, and the role of the librarian is to help students develop ways to critically distill fact from opinion, science from spin and, more recently, information from “disinformation,” or, information that is purposely misleading (Fallis, 2015).
Cognitive bias
We all have cognitive biases, and they can limit our judgment. The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (Reber, Allan, & Reber, 2009) defines confirmation bias as “[t]he tendency to seek and interpret information that confirms existing beliefs.” Recently, the media has focused on the impact of confirmation bias with regard to the influence of false or heavily biased information. Librarian Lane Wilkinson (2017) expressed it best when he observed that fake news has found a way to monetize confirmation bias, though I don’t think fake news is the first to do so. Our susceptibility to confirmation bias is partially about protecting our identities, and wanting to believe information that positions us on the right side of truth. We have to reckon with confirmation bias whenever we encounter new pieces of information, particularly those that ask us to take a side on an issue or believe something that many others do not.
Part of helping learners negotiate the divergent and contradictory nature of online information is giving them an opportunity not only to confront their own biases, but to confront bias in the search algorithms they use as well. Safiya Noble (2018), an Information Studies scholar, has published a new book called Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. Noble’s work looks at how Google search results and autofill suggestions impact how we see ourselves and the world around us; how our own biases shape and are shaped by search algorithms. We use Google for searching and “lookup,” but Noble reminds us that Google does not use an information retrieval algorithm designed to find the “best” information. Rather, Google uses an advertising algorithm that is designed to present users with a series of links that are appealing to that user, popular with others, and beneficial to advertisers. Acknowledging personal and search engine biases is the first step toward a more critical relationship with online information.
Information literacy threshold concepts
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) approved a new Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in 2015, and it is grounded in threshold concepts theory. Threshold concepts are likened to portals that open up previously inaccessible ways of thinking, or a transformation of understanding (Meyer & Land, 2003). They represent difficult core concepts within disciplines that, once grasped, allow learners to move forward in the discipline. Among the threshold concepts posited for information literacy, two in particular stand out as relevant to this discussion: “Authority is Constructed and Contextual,” and “Information Creation as a Process.” Put simply, we should be asking learners to think about who created the information they are consuming and by what means, or how, it was created.
“Authority is Constructed and Contextual” as an information literacy concept suggests that learners begin to recognize established authorities in their discipline, and also determine how established authority might prevent marginalized voices from being heard (ACRL, 2015). Badke (2015) makes the distinction between expertise and authority. The former is a characteristic of an individual after years of study or work, and the latter is granted externally by a community. Given the ease with which information can be gathered online, Badke uses Patrick Wilson’s terminology to suggest students have developed an “administrative” rather than “cognitive” sense of authority. In other words, students understand scholarly work as authoritative because they have been instructed to see it that way. Students should instead be encouraged to think about authority in terms of expertise, to consider by what means a person might become authoritative on a subject, to become accustomed to investigating the credentials of the individuals whose words they choose to share, reproduce, or cite.
Understanding “Information Creation as a Process” involves realizing that the process by which a piece of information came into being can reveal clues as to its credibility (ACRL, 2015). Evidence of process might include links, citations, interview quotations, or a notation of peer review. Process also could be evident in the writer’s status as a journalist at an established news source and thus subject to journalistic integrity, or a person with first-hand knowledge of a subject developed through years of experience.
A study from Columbia showed that 60% of links posted to social media were not clicked. In other words, the majority of users were sharing content on social media without even scanning the article. A multi-state study from Stanford (Wineburg et al., 2016) found that students are adept at using platforms, but not at evaluating information. Parts of the study showed that students are likely to accept claims at face value rather than investigating the source of those claims. In order to think critically about the information we encounter online, we not only have to engage with the content itself, but we also need to return to the source and question its validity.
What we can do
1. Provide learners with frameworks against which to evaluate online information
Many are familiar with the cheekily named CRAAP test (Blakeslee, 2004), which asks learners to evaluate online information for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. The slightly modified RADAR (Relevance, Authority, Appearance, Reason) approach (Mandalios, 2013) is less well-known. Both, as Wilkinson (2017) points out, emphasize an article’s usefulness rather than its reliability, and both unrealistically assume students are always in the position to appropriately judge the content of articles that may be beyond their scope of expertise. Both CRAAP and RADAR are useful starting points, and are worthwhile for students to know. However, instead of understanding every claim made in an article, learners should be encouraged to look to the source of the information – the news site, the journal, etc. – and beyond (Wilkinson, 2017), to consider what else they can learn about the topic by looking elsewhere, and to discover what they can about the source that published the information in question. Learners should ask themselves, “given the source of this article, and given the way the issue is reported elsewhere, can I trust what I’m reading?” (Wilkinson, 2017, para. 17). As we help learners develop good fact-checking and critical evaluation habits, we should encourage students to return to the source and ask either, “who said this?” or “who decided to publish this?”
2. Help learners acknowledge their own biases
Without acknowledging our brain’s limitations when encountering information that contradicts our beliefs, any framework for evaluating information will be inadequate. Educators should provide learners with opportunities to consider and even discuss their own biases, in addition to how their biases might influence their perception of new information.
3. Invite librarians into your class and encourage students to visit the reference desk
Librarian work involves helping students evaluate online information, directing them to the best sources for their work, and teaching strategies for effective research. The spirit of that work has not changed. Students can seek one-on-one help with critical research elements of their assignments. Although librarians are also well-positioned to teach information literacy concepts in classrooms, information literacy engagement is more than just research skills. Given how often students interact with online information and the extent to which most internet users lack critical evaluation skills, we would do well to consider ways of embedding opportunities for information literacy skill development at every level of the curriculum.
References
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2015). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.
Badke, W. B. (2015). Expertise and Authority in an Age of Crowdsourcing. In Swason, T.A. & Jagman, H. (Eds.) Not just where to click: Teaching students how to think about information. Chicago, Illinois: Association of College and Research Libraries.
Blakeslee, S. (2004). The CRAAP test. LOEX Quarterly, 31(3). Retrieved from http://commons. emich.edu/loexquarterly/vol31/iss3/4.
Fallis, D. (2015). What is disinformation? Library Trends, 63(3), 401-426.
Gabielkov, M., Ramachandran, A., Chaintreau, A., & Legout, A. (2016). Social clicks: What and who gets read on Twitter?. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, 44(1), 179-192.
Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478.
Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Noble, S. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York: New York University Press.
Reber, A., Allen, R., & Reber, E.S. (2009). The Penguin dictionary of psychology (4th ed.). London; New York: Penguin.
Tyckoson, D. (2011). History and functions of reference service. In Bopp, R., & Smith, L. (Eds.), Reference and information services: An introduction. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.
Wilkinson, L. (2017, June 2). LOEX 2017: Teaching popular source evaluation in an era of fake news, post-truth, and confirmation bias [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://senseandreference.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/loex2017.
Wineburg, S., McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., & Ortega, T. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934.