Problematizing the Role of Information Literacy in Disinformation, Dialogue, and the Healing of Democracy

The proliferation of technology in the past decade has rapidly changed information behavior. In response, information literacy instruction has expanded to include critical practices to help students examine how biases shape the finding and evaluating of information. However, librarians are now being called to address the ways in which information technology itself is laden with biases and the impact this technology can have on both the search experience and the material world. In particular, the threat of mis/dis/malinformation (Wardle, 2019) and biased search algorithms to democratic principles has become a concern for librarians, students, and the everyday searcher. The conversation around the impact of artificial intelligence, personal data harvesting, and search algorithms has been gaining attention – most recently in response to the mis/dis/malinformation campaign against the U.S. presidential election and the January 6th insurrection – and has created both the potential and the imperative to incorporate these topics into information literacy instruction. We propose integrating dialogic exercises into library instructional practice as one means of accomplishing this goal.