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Research Assignment Design: Critical Information Literacy

Critical Information Literacy

"Critical information literacy (CIL) is a theory and practice that considers the sociopolitical dimensions of information and production of knowledge, and critiques the ways in which systems of power shape the creation, distribution, and reception of information."

From: Emily Drabinski and Eamon Tewell's 2019 Critical Information Literacy

Ways to incorporate critical information literacy

Promoting critique

  • Creating strategies for spotting bias
  • Checking for retracted studies
  • Discussing primary sources that document changes in the field
  • Evaluating provenance and funding

Evaluation of data and methodology

  • Monitoring methodological issues
  • Paying attention to the types of data being used

Access to scholarly research and power

The search process

  • Discussing algorithmic biases
  • Discussing power structures within search tools

Source types

  • Consider moving away from peer review privilege
  • Include more than the written word, including interviews, social media feeds, visual rhetoric, putting them in context with other sources
  • Consider including social media, blogs, and newspapers produced by people of color for audiences that are predominately people of color
  • Move away from dichotomous paradigms by using the cycle of information to discuss sources
    • Rather than scholarly vs popular/primary vs secondary/peer reviewed vs not, consider discussing the time and place of publication, the type of source and information, and the authors

News and information

  • Consider access privilege or representative privilege
  • Consider how "most news organizations are beholden to their parent companies, their advertisers, and the audience those advertisers speak to" (Black Lives Matter in Information Literacy)
  • Discuss framing and "how the details selected for inclusion or exclusion can affect the implicit message of a news report, and how social media can either fill gaps or poke holes in news reports" (Black Lives Matter in Information Literacy)
  • Include global perspectives 

Decentering the center

  • Acknowledge that what is considered common knowledge "is an unquestioned and unacknowledged white perspective" (Trippin' Over the Color Line)
  • Centering marginalized voices/perspectives by using counterstories/testimonials 
  • Problematize assumptions or accepted truths
  • Critique authority as "socially constructed within the context of structures of oppression, including racism and sexism" (Black Lives Matter in Information Literacy)

Knowledge and information production

  • Consider how traditional methods of knowledge and information production are biased
  • Consider how avenues of scholarly communication are influenced by biases in knowledge and information production

Library Instruction Examples