Information disorder: Helping students to think critically about the news

Misinformation, disinformation, bias, propaganda, “fake news,” bots, algorithms, “truthiness,” “alternative facts,” information pollution, memes, clickbait, echo chambers, filter bubbles, information overload… In this session, we discuss our “Information disorder” workshop, which aims to help students more skillfully navigate the news in today’s messy and confusing information environment. “In this post-truth age librarians are more important than ever,” claims an American Library Association report on fake news (Cooke, 2018). Traditional checklist methods of evaluation (e.g. CRAAP; RADAR) fall short however. Instead our interactive workshop asks participants to reflect on their own news practices. We look at the various types of news content and some of the problems that can creep in, and we introduce a critical thinking skills framework from journalism through which to evaluate the news around us