After reading the 5 items in the module on fake news, there are two messages I think will most inform my work as an information professional.
First is the need to continue to support media outlets and provide access to them to customers. Iosifidis and Nicoli (pp. 60-81, 2019) point out the irony of news media heavily using social media to reach their followers. While using Facebook or Twitter as an aggregator of news sources is convenient, it also opens up readers to exposure to other disreputable articles as they scroll.
However, the paywall that many articles are locked behind is a heavy deterrent to using regular media. If libraries were to continue to subscribe to many, varied outlets, both print and online, it would assist those outlets to continue to make money. It also helps the library to serve the community as a reliable place to discover information.
Second is the (quite urgent) need to focus literacy programmes in the library on media literacy. Johnston (pp. 26-27, 2018) highlights the fact that many people get most or all of their news from social media sources, which comes to them filtered through an echo chamber of like-minded biases, interests and opinions.
Media literacy is defined as the ability “to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports from all media: print, TV, radio or the web”. It refers to the decisions the public must make daily in their personal lives, decisions that have been informed by information sources they find in the media, the internet, and social media (Neely-Sardon & Tignor, 2018, pp. 109-11).
Despite the irritation of having your third cousin constantly sharing conspiracy videos on Facebook, media illiteracy does have a personal impact on people. Opinion, true and false information, and the sheer scope of data means it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. This is especially true for medical information.
Chou et al, (pp. 2417-2418, 2018) discuss the adverse effects misinformation on social media can have on public health, such as the arguments we all would have witnessed about vaccinations over the last year. Such misinformation breeds scepticism about medical guidelines – and again, we all are aware of those arguments regarding Covid precautions.
The global pandemic has cast into glaring light the need for media and digital literacy. Libraries are ideal for assisting with media literacy; they have been found to provide “a neutral, non-stigmatised, non-clinical space” (Crawford et al, 2014, p.168-169) and are used by individuals who may otherwise have difficulty accessing other programmes.
Regarding health information, libraries can reduce the burden on the health system by: empowering people to access and use certified information; providing free usage of internet and information resources; supporting multiple types of information literacy; and ultimately helping with the prevention and early diagnosis of illness (p.168-169).
Chou, W. S., Klein, W. M. P., & Oh, A. (2018). Addressing health-related misinformation on social media. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 320(23), 2417-2418.
Crawford, J. C., Irving, C., Foreman, J., & Higgison, M. (2014). Information literacy and lifelong learning: Policy issues, the workplace, health and public libraries. Chandos Pub.
Iosifidis, P., & Nicoli, N. (2019). The battle to end fake news: A qualitative content analysis of Facebook announcements on how it combats disinformation. International Communication Gazette, 82(1), 60-81. doi:10.1177/1748048519880729
Johnston, N. (2018). Living in the Post-Truth world: Recent research and resources. InCite, 39(3/4), 26–27.
Neely-Sardon, A., & Tignor, M. (2018). Focus on the facts: A news and information literacy instructional program. The Reference Librarian, 59(3), 108-121.