Lurking behind every research paper assignment is a librarian and a professor waiting to jump at the opportunity to teach information literacy. Sure enough, if you assign a research paper, the fake news articles and sensationalist web clickbait will come. At this point, Instruction Librarians lug around metaphorical toolkits with an unimaginable surplus of acronyms (CRAAP, Big6, Super3) created to help combat the fake news phenomenon and facilitate critical analysis of media news providers. It’s the quick-fix Band-Aid for teaching information literacy on the surface level but, when bots and algorithms can generate sensationalist news intelligently, those acronyms fall SHORT (Should Help Out but Really cause Trouble).

The intersection of media and libraries is well defined in the American Library Association’s core value of social responsibility last adopted in 2004. “The broad social responsibilities of the American Library Association are defined in terms of the contribution that librarianship can make in ameliorating or solving the critical problems of society; support for efforts to help inform and educate the people of the United States on these problems and to encourage them to examine the many views on and the facts regarding each problem” (2004). Essentially, the ALA is calling to arms the literacy information instructors in academic institutions to uphold and teach information social justice. Given that information inundates our lives, information should also be perceived as a tool that can work for or against a democratic society and, because the ALA serves the ideals of a democratic and informed society, Instruction Librarians are bound by their obligation to learn from and teach fake news.

The current complication we are all subtly facing is the quiet slow death of fake news.

When we call something news, we assign a level of validity that the information we are being presented with can convincingly hold some points of truth that, overall, feed a larger mission of misleading the reader. However, as fake news becomes less fake and more sensational, it is no longer fake or false facts that are responsible for the negative persuasion on the reader but rather it is the affect of the information. We consume information from a perspective of how it makes us feel.

That’s why there is a movement to drop fake news and understand it as rebranded propaganda in the post-truth world.

However, academic Librarians have been teaching with their handy acronyms (I’m guilty of this, too) as a remedy for understanding the misinformation crisis on a superficial level. In order to attack the influx of sensationalist information, libraries need to embrace the world as being in post-truth. Mr. Library Dude (Joe Hardenbrook, 2017) said it best, “it takes time to critically evaluate and a checklist approach won’t suffice. You need to think, analyze, question motives, and question your own assumptions too.”

“Now is not the time for information professionals to be neutral about fake news, half truths, alternative facts and those that perpetuate them and allow them to flourish, it is the time to be proactive, noisy and passionate” (Kylie Burgess, 2017). Kylie’s right. Academic libraries need to throw their acronyms aside, push up the sleeves of their cardigans, and fall deeply and maddeningly into an understanding of post-truth ideology.

As librarians across the Nation begin to use their voices with more confidence and assurance about social justice issues, the library as an institution will continually develop its reputation as a social justice beacon for the Nation. In this regard, academic Instruction Librarians must learn to adopt information social justice. Laura Saunders (2017) articulately points out that “for the most part librarians and library professional associations have embraced information social justice as a natural fit for their education and outreach missions, as well as the core value of social responsibility”.

We know we need to do something, but first we need to re-teach ourselves a better avenue of approach.

Post-truth, declared as Dictionary.com’s word of the year in 2016, is the idea that information is judged, not on objective fact, but from the consumer’s biases and beliefs. Emotional responses to information are more powerful a tool for rationalizing than the objective process of weighing the facts. Truth, therefore, that feels no longer relevant is no longer relevant.

An idea proposed at a conference held by the Phillips Academy (2017) suggests to academic Librarians to reduce the power of the conglomerate that is Fake News by reframing the information as propaganda when teaching their students. Propaganda has historically been difficult for information consumers to understand. Take, for example, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” as the epitome of propaganda’s power. Mix in some well written satire, snap your fingers, and suddenly Europe thinks people are actually going to eat their progeny. Fake News seems like a new and dangerous thing but, when you re-contextualize it, it’s actually just a historical battle against propaganda and emotions.

With some historical context, the overwhelming task of deconstructing Fake News in a Post-Truth world seems increasing plausible and it’s easy enough to go into that Librarian tool-box, too. And, if I’m being realistic, the deconstruction has got to start in libraries. Barbara Fister (2017) makes the observation that “governments [cannot] pass laws that will fix the problem (though some are trying.) And teaching students the art of fact-checking won’t solve the problem, either. It goes deeper than that.” Though Barbara didn’t describe just how deep fighting misinformation goes, we know that it includes libraries.

The American Library Association established their five Key Action Areas in 1998 as guiding principles for themselves and libraries nationally. Most relevant to my argument is the focus on Intellectual Freedom and Education and Continuous Learning. Libraries are expected to provide all information without biases and objection—to foster Intellectual Freedom and continuous learning—but how can libraries carefully navigate that obligation if the information is falsified; skewed; misleading?

Libraries being examples of thoughtful and analytical information stewardship is one answer, and the only answer that I can justifiably present at this moment. The truth is that libraries can only educated insofar as they can afford to reach, and our resources only allow for so much prosperity. Ben Johnson (2017) justifies our failure with this thought: “And if false information wins the day, we can take comfort in knowing that we kept the option of truth available.”

By: Kimberlee Roberts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Burgess, K. (1970, February 06). Librarianship in a post-truth world: An information science student’s perspective. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://librarywhisperers.space/home/2017/2/5/librarianship-in-a-post-truth-world-an-information-science-students-perspective

Fister, B. (n.d.). Post-Post Truth | Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/post-post-truth-0

Hardenbrook, J. (2017, April 04). Post-Truth and Fake News. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://mrlibrarydude.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/post-truth-and-fake-news/

Johnson, B. (2017, March). Information Literacy is Dead: The Role of Libraries in a Post-Truth World. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/mar17/Johnson–Information-Literacy-Is-Dead–The-Role-of-Libraries-in-a-Post-Truth-World.shtml

1. (n.d.). Libraries in a Post-Truth World by Phillips Academy Andover. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://livestream.com/phillipsacademy/owhl

Saunders, L. (2017). Connecting information literacy and social justice: Why and how. Communications in Information Literacy, 11(1), 55-75.

Nope, not the 1999 Kubrick drama-mystery, but a metaphor for something glaring that’s happening in libraries right now; something no one wants to talk about.

Citation: Depression, Ryan Melaugh. Flikr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/120632374@N07/13974181800

Let’s start with this.

Through a series of discussions and observations, a distaste for the popular buzz-word tolerance rose up in my throat. I felt my own guttural rejection of the term and its ideology when I listened to colleagues and friends throw the word around as a haven for radical ideas and social justice. Bearing witness to proposed solutions such as:  “With more tolerance we could…” and “We need to create spaces tolerant of…” my brain tried to rationalize why I wasn’t in agreeance. Then I made one association I’ll never forget.

We (human beings) are told we must tolerate pain—must learn to tolerate an unjust legal system—to tolerate the results of a government election. We are socialized to associate tolerance with our own silent acceptance of dissatisfaction. Why, then, are we pasting this word on the facades of our libraries?

The LIS profession is well-practiced at being self-aware. Many professionals have contributed their thoughts to the fields’ inherent inability to be a service that is apolitical and neutral. It seems to be a consensus that every decision executed within libraries is a deliberate choice that has come from a living, breathing, in-some-way-biased human being. In a wildly popular post from the online platform BookRoit, Kelly Jensen writes “it’s impossible to be a neutral space with the goal of reaching a community” (2017). Therefore, as a way of mitigating our position in society while also honoring our own code of ethics, libraries have been and have begun to establish advocacy programs and platforms for unheard marginalized populations. Libraries have sacrificed their reputations with stakeholders to foster exhibits on resistance, pigeonholed cultures, and confront failing education systems and fake news.

It is obvious: the work libraries are doing is important and it is work that the library should be doing. The mistake of progress originates in the use of the complacent ideology of tolerance. Kelly Jensen continues in her article: “by inviting all in a community to be in a shared space, libraries embrace the idea of encouraging education, encouraging acceptance and tolerance” (2017).

Kelly’s only speaking what libraries in large are thinking, too: that there is an unprecedented level of hatred and racism and tension in this current socio-political environment and we believe that the library can do something about it. But it isn’t tolerance we should be advocating for.

Attitudes of tolerance create spaces that foster micro-aggressions, continued support of systemic oppression, and spot-light or feel-good diversity and multiculturalism. Tolerance is active silence and passive participation in standing up and speaking out against historic social issues.

In the same year that Kelly Jensen wrote her article praising the work of social justice librarians, April Hathcock and Fobazi Ettarh responded to their recent experience at ALA Chicago with an opposing perspective: that libraries weren’t achieving their progressive agenda as well as they were all claiming.

April Hathcock took to her wordpress (2017) to illuminate for her colleagues that the LIS profession is infiltrated with historic racism and no one wants to talk about it. Several days at the convention exhausted April, beyond the usual busy-ness and excitement, but on a deep and personal level that April best describes as race fatigue. In short, it was exhausting for April to be herself in this field and her experience is not an isolated incident. Fobazi Ettarh took to her wordpress (2017) to express her frustrations with ALA Chicago and the library environment that fosters racial micro-aggressions. Fobazi writes “I cannot love a vocation that does not love me. I cannot love a profession where I cannot thrive due to facets of my identity. And I do not want to…I will not put my whole self into a field that does not accept all of me. All of my blackness. All of my radicalness and attempts at decolonization” (2017).

That’s tolerance: when an institution makes the active choice to allow the presence of a population without uplifting, encouraging, or supporting them; that institution is merely allowing that population to co-exist separately, but not equally. An open door does not erase historic oppression. Tolerance of populations breed the systemic hierarchy into being. Tolerance is a scapegoat for diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion. There is no action in tolerance but silence.

If the experiences of April Hathcock and Fobazi Ettarh aren’t proof that tolerance in the LIS profession is an egregious error, let’s take a look at the concept of repressive tolerance. Oxford Reference cites repressive tolerance as two key concepts. The first being “the unthinking acceptance of entrenched attitudes and ideas, even when these are obviously damaging to other people, or indeed the environment”. Think about the long road to women’s suffrage, for example. The second being “the vocal endorsement of actions that are manifestly aggressive towards other people (the popular support in the US and the UK in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 for the respective government’s attempts to override or limit habeas corpus is a clear example of this)”. Remember: libraries were tolerant of the social-political environment when we segregated our stacks. We were tolerant—silent—wrong.

The idea of tolerance in libraries is inherently good-natured, but having looked past the feel-good façade of the idea, I can see now that tolerance has no place in the library. We need to replace tolerance with education, empathy, and understanding.

By Kimberlee Roberts

 

 

 

References

Black people aren’t making things up: The science behind “racial battle fatigue”. (2015). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://thinkprogress.org/black-people-arent-making-things-up-the-science-behind-racial-battle-fatigue-9726fcebc938/

Ettarh, F. (2017). Post-ALA Fatigue and “Nice White Ladies”. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://fobaziettarh.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/post-ala-fatigue-and-nice-white-ladies/

Hathcock, A. (2017). Post-ALA Race Fatigue. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://aprilhathcock.wordpress.com/2017/06/27/post-ala-race-fatigue/

Jensen, K. (2017). Libraries Resist: A Round-Up of Tolerance, Social Justice, & Resistance in US Libraries. Retrieved from https://bookriot.com/2017/02/10/libraries-resist-round-tolerance-social-justice-resistance-us-libraries/

Repressive Tolerance. Oxford Reference. Ed.   Retrieved 1 Oct. 2018, from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100414515.