Continuing my series of blog posts on my learning points from the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL), this post will talk about some of the presentations at the conference that made me Think Big Thoughts.
Recognising the discipline of information literacy
In a panel discussion, Clarence Maybee, Karen Kaufmann, Bill Johnston, and Sheila Webber discussed the implications of recognising information literacy as a distinct academic discipline. The panel are working on a book in the topic, due to publish in 2025.
I live-posted this panel on Mastodon, so my immediate notes from this session can be viewed on my Wakelet. Here, I wanted to highlight some of my thoughts from the panel, having reflected on it for a little longer.
I’d heard some of these ideas discussed before, in a presentation by Karen Kaufmann at LILAC in 2022. The panel format at ECIL was valuable for bringing together varied perspectives on the topic. All four of the panellists come from different academic and practice backgrounds, and have differing perspectives on what they consider important in the disciplinary focus of information literacy.
I particularly agree with a couple of the points that Sheila made (and I’m not just saying that because she’s my PhD supervisor!). Naming IL as our discipline and taking ownership allows us to carve out our space in the crowded research landscape. When I’m talking to academics at my institution about my PhD research, I make a point of referring to information literacy as the discipline I’m working within, because it is a field with its own evidence base and body of knowledge, and it seems to me important to articulate that. I also liked Sheila’s point about acknowledging our own discipline positions us to be able to take advantage of emerging research areas (the concept of “AI literacy” being a particularly pertinent one at the moment!).
What shapes our trust in scientific information
In an incredibly thought-provoking presentation, Armin Jacob and Lennart Perrey, from the ZBW Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Germany, discussed what informs the reader’s opinion of how “scientific” a paper appears to be. They noted that a piece of work can have the characteristics of “scientificness” without actually being accurate, and this is relevant to discussions of mis- and disinformation.
The team conducted a literature search to identify the characteristics of “scientific perception”, and identified the following characteristics:
- Presence of formulae.
- Use of tables, figures and diagrams.
- Language, e.g. complex terminology, passive voice (but this may not always have the same effect, depends on subject matter and audience).
- Formatting (e.g. two-column layout is more scientific than single column!).
- Author names, e.g. titles, institutional affiliations.
- Includes references (but the reader will not check these!).
The authors acknowledged the limitations of this review: the concepts of credibility and trust are very complex, therefore it is hard to measure the effects. Something that appears trustworthy to one person may appear less so to another, based on the same elements.
They closed by noting that these elements are all easily manipulated to intentionally add a veneer of credibility to pseudoscience and/or disinformation. I’ve definitely seen this – I have a colleague at the university who is very interested in a particular conspiracy theory. He has often contacted me to help assess the credibility of papers that adherents of this conspiracy claim as evidence for their assertions, and this kind of “scientific-ish” presentation strikes me as quite common in this field. It’s fascinating to me how much the presentation impacts how we understand the content of a piece of media – the point about a two-column layout being seen as “more scientific” than a single column was a brilliant example of this!
The relationship between videogame literacy and information literacy
Sheila Webber, from the University of Sheffield, drew on her own research and that of some of her Masters students to investigate the IL dimensions within videogame literacy. She noted that much of the research on games and IL looks at using games as a teaching method for IL, but she was interested instead in how IL appears within gaming experience.
She started with a definition of videogame literacy. This has three components:
- Operational literacy: ability to play the game (e.g. navigate the interface, understand the rules).
- Cultural literacy: understanding the game in its technical context, within the world of gaming (e.g. genre), and within the wider cultural world (e.g. Harry Potter).
- Critical literacy: social, economic and political context of the games and players, e.g. censorship, inclusion/representation.
IL is currently not considered as a component of VGL, but Sheila believes it is present in each of the three aspects above, but hidden. E.g.:
- Operational: IL appears in combining information from many sources to make decisions and get better at the game.
- Cultural: IL dimension includes using the conventions of the game, understanding cultural references.
- Critical: IL involved in understanding power structures, how information about the game is created and presented.
This was such an interesting perspective, and one I’d not encountered before. I really like these kinds of explorations of how information literacy can be viewed in non-educational contexts. I suspect many librarians might not consider that a person playing a videogame is engaged in information literacy, but I think Sheila argued very persuasively for how they could be seen to be doing so.
Organising Chaos 