Libraries and Media Literacy

Introduction

The careers of fiction writers are founded on some key assumptions:

• literacy is common and easy to attain
• knowledge and information are valuable
• society is made stronger by the free exchange of ideas

Attempts to control information as part of a political agenda are on the rise as state governments ban topics from history books and organizations seek to ban thousands of books from libraries on religious grounds.

In the midst of a national election, conflicting messages claim that both major parties are evil cabals led by criminals who want the worst for us, and there is evidence of foreign actors deliberately using social media to keep voters off balance and uncertain.

As we debate the reliability of the information that surrounds us, we need a source of training and tools to help us cut through the noise. Fortunately, we have a source nearby and freely accessible: libraries and the librarians who run them.

At a time when the tools of information dissemination are being actively used to confuse and mislead people around the world, what role does our library system play in equipping people with the tools to see through the chaos and find truth?

Media Literacy, Why It’s Important

Media Literacy, boiled down to its essence, is the ability to engage responsibly with information in any of the many formats through which we encounter it on a daily basis.

While literacy traditionally refers to written texts, media literacy embraces the much wider range of ways we encounter information today, expanding the definition to include “a variety of multimodal texts (‘texts’ that may include visual, audio, and print text elements) that range from a magazine advertisement to a televised rock video, a radio talk show to a video game, a cell phone photograph to a website (Hoechsmann & Poyntz, 2012).”

We are all impacted by the media that surround us, and we must all have the tools to evaluate and use that media responsibly. In the foreword to the 2019 edition of Teaching Media Literacy, Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, has this to say:

Media literacy is particularly important in education. Students are eager to engage with popular culture and need to be taught how to engage with and assess the information they’ll find. Media literacy is critical to helping young people succeed, and yet their ability to assess information and people on the Internet is generally poor. (DeAbreu, 2019).

Educating students and giving them the right tools should be a national educational priority, as these skills will determine how well-informed they will be and how effectively they’ll participate as citizens of our modern society. (DeAbreu, 2019). 

Digital Media Literacy

“Digital Media Literacy is often understood as the ability to access, understand, and participate or create content using digital media (Healey, 2011).” This concept further expands the idea of media literacy to include all forms of content that we encounter or create online with digital tools.

Notably, this covers social media platforms, mechanisms by which anyone can create online content for others to consume. Where once our information came from a limited number of channels, we are now constantly bombarded by information and messages, many of which we create ourselves. 

To illustrate the importance of digital media literacy, consider these statistics about internet usage worldwide and in the USA (Pelchen, 2024): 

• 5.35 billion people worldwide have Internet access and use it an average of 6.5 hours per day, 4 hours per day on mobile devices.
• 5.04 billion people use social media worldwide, 94.2% of Internet users.
• 1.11 billion websites exist on the internet, and 7.5 million blog posts are published every day.
• 96.5% of people access the internet on a mobile device, which generates 59% of all Internet traffic.
• 94.6% of Americans have internet access, distributed across age groups as shown below:

In short, billions of people walk around with the Internet in their pockets. Digital media usage is nearly universal, especially among younger people.

Digital media literacy is a critical skill. 

Without Digital Media Literacy

It's easy to imagine the problems that may arise when people lack digital media literacy skills. Without the ability to distinguish fact from fabrication, without the skills to dig into the sources behind online claims, people can fall prey to scams and campaigns of deliberate misinformation. 

We don't need to imagine the problems. Here are a few increasingly common issues users face on the Internet:

• Fake news stories and foreign disinformation on social media can mislead voters and reduce trust in national institutions, as seen with the flood of fake news before the 2016 US election. (DeAbreu, 2019). Such tactics were identified in 2020 and again today. 
• Personal health risks can arise from unsubstantiated claims of cures for diseases, such as the claims that Ivermectin could cure COVID-19, a position championed by anti-vaccine activists in 2021. (Schraer, Goodman, and Menon, 2021).
• The increasing subtlety of advertisers can make ads almost indistinguishable from informative content, subjecting Internet users to misleading advertising tactics and possible financial impact. (Storozhuk, 2024).

Surrounded by content, bombarded by potentially misleading messages, Internet users need tools, techniques, and knowledge to fight back and find the facts floating in the sea of fiction. There are many agendas on the Internet seeking willing (or gullible) consumers. 

In general, "Social media is shown to inhibit ethical decision-making when used as an information dissemination tool." (Chauhan et.al., 2021). How can users protect themselves from falling prey to unscrupulous actors on the Internet?

Libraries to the Rescue!

Libraries have evolved to be much more than just a place where books and periodicals are stored. 

Libraries are community data stewards, distributing not just books, but also access to services, space, and education in support of public literacy. Contemporary libraries are not just for published works, but also provide technology access, such as computers and 3D printers, and social necessities, such as access to municipal services, bathrooms, and public meeting spaces. They provide democratic societies with literacy skills. (Lachance et.al., 2023)

In the role of "community data stewards," libraries serve the "digital public interest" by storing and providing access to digital information from a wide range of sources (government, corporate, non-profit, and private), and by offering training to make people comfortable with new digital technologies and teach them the fundamentals of data protection and online security. (Lachance et.al., 2023). Such knowledge is obviously critical, with so much of our lives (and finances!) kept online.

In addition, librarians can play a critical role in closing the inclusion gap. Standard academic curricula focus on a common set of classes and core topics, and they fail to take into account many students' individual needs and experiences. In many areas, librarians step in to fill the gap and help these students develop literacy skills and a lifelong love of reading. (Torres, 2022).

Digital media literacy will be particularly important as the influence of Artificial Intelligence continues to spread. From debates about whether AI will destroy humanity or save it, to questions of how it should be ethically used, to concerns about the possible loss of jobs as AI becomes increasingly capable of performing complex tasks, it's increasingly clear that "Data-intensive technologies like AI in our everyday lives increasingly creates social and political imbalances. Clearly, digital literacy is crucial for the public to understand the changes in our lives." (Lachance et.al. 2023). 

An interesting example of the impact of AI and the need for digital media literacy is in the context of higher education, where many universities are wrestling with evolving discussions about what constitutes plagiarism in an era when AI can instantly collate and summarize vast quantities of information for students tasked with writing research papers. (Barnett, 2023)

Libraries are a freely-available source of training in key digital media literacy skills, but according to research conducted by Martzoukou and Elliott in 2016—in which they evaluated several Masters of Library and Information Science programs and interviewed a large number of librarians—librarians in general feel under-prepared by their training and in need of additional ongoing training in these areas. In 2021, Martzoukou conducted additional research into the increasing criticality of the role of libraries in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns that pushed so much interaction online. Librarians are critical but feel undertrained despite being trailblazers in online training.

Threats to Libraries

As community data stewards, librarians are called upon to protect the privacy of patrons and their personal information. "For instance, libraries have sought protections for patrons against invasive legislation such as the Patriot Act. They have actively resisted efforts by U.S. agencies to surveil users" (Lachance et.al. 2023).

In 2005, four librarians in Connecticut received an FBI order to surrender patron data under the authority of a National Security Letter. The NSL was not a court order and came with a gag order that would prevent the library from ever divulging that they'd shared the data. With the help of the ACLU, they challenged the constitutionality of the FBI's activities and won. The atmosphere of surveillance following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US led the ALA to develop a privacy toolkit to help libraries protect their patrons' privacy. (SinhaRoy, 2021).

Some librarians take this to a nearly subversive extreme, taking risks to protect usage information and shield patrons from invasive, authoritarian government activities and offering other librarians advice on how to use the available tools to provide more protection than may be strictly mandated. (librarypunk, 2024). The podcast episode linked below is a recent example of librarians who take their roles as data stewards very seriously. (Warning - the episode is quite explicit!) 

Another concern is the recent rise of book banning efforts, which in some places have escalated to attempts to defund entire library systems. In an era when libraries serve such a critical role in helping people navigate an increasingly complex online world, there are people and organizations dedicated to keeping those tools away from the people who need them.

EveryLibrary tracks such activities in eleven states:

We have seen the march of book bannings turn into a movement to defund public libraries entirely. Many politicians and far-right groups are attempting to deny your freedom to simply check out a book by defunding libraries over books and programs, and they are coming for your library next. (Every Library, 2023).

CBS Sunday Morning did a short piece exploring this battle. More than 2500 books were banned in libraries and schools between 2020 and 2022, and "activists in 37 states have challenged school districts for offering non-fiction and fiction books that discuss race and racism, slavery, sex and gender identity." (CBS Sunday Morning, 2023).

If such campaigns to ban books and defund libraries are successful, many communities will lose an important resource and a critical source of training and knowledge that can help them protect themselves in our digital society. 

In Conclusion

Our world is increasingly online and complex. Most of us use the Internet a significant portion of each day, and we are constantly bombarded by information and messages intended to influence our thinking and our behavior. To navigate such a world effectively, we all need the digital media literacy skills to critically evaluate the information we encounter and separate fact from fiction. 

Our libraries are a key source of training in such skills for many people, but they are under appreciated, under funded, and under attack. We must protect and fund our libraries and the people who work at them, to ensure that our citizens have access to the tools they need to avoid becoming the victims of agendas that depend on their inability to navigate the complex landscape of digital media. 

Learning More

In addition to the references below, here are some resources where you can find out more about current activities to protect access to libraries and digital literacy:

• Public Library Association Digital Literacy Initiative
• Public Libraries Online
• The Political Librarian Institute
• EveryLibrary News and Updates
• The 7 Best Library Podcasts

References

American Library Association. (2021, October). Privacy | ALA. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacy

Barnett, S. (2023, January 30). ChatGPT Is Making Universities Rethink Plagiarism. WIRED. Retrieved June 13, 2024, from https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-college-university-plagiarism/

CBS Sunday Morning. (2023, April 23). The fight over banning books [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAsEJ29xV-A

Chauhan, R. S., Connelly, S., Howe, D. C., Soderberg, A. T., & Crisostomo, M. (2021). The danger of “fake news”: how using social media for information dissemination can inhibit the ethical decision making process. Ethics & Behavior, 32(4), 287–306. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1080/10508422.2021.1890598

De Abreu, B. S. (2019). Teaching media literacy (Second edition.). ALA Neal-Schuman, an imprint of the American Library Association.

Every Library. (2023, April 12). They're coming for your public library (updated). Retrieved 06 16, 2024, from https://action.everylibrary.org/they_re_coming_for_your_public_library

Healey, J. (2011). Social impacts of digital media. [electronic resource]. Spinney Press.

Hoechsmann, M., & Poyntz, S. R. (2012). Media literacies: a critical introduction. [electronic resource]. Wiley-Blackwell. 

Lachance, N., O'Connor, F., Sobol, B., & Wong, W. H. (2023, December 30). Citizenship in the age of data: The critical role of libraries for digital literacy. Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/citizenship-in-the-age-of-data-the-critical-role-of-libraries-for-digital-literacy/article_d76beadc-9f8d-11ee-a0b4-3748b15f9758.html

librarypunk. (2021-present). librarypunk [Audio podcast]. https://www.librarypunk.gay/

Martzoukou, K., & Elliott, J. (2016). The Development of Digital Literacy and Inclusion Skills of Public Librarians. Communications in Information Literacy, 10(1), 99–115.

Martzoukou, K. (2021). Academic libraries in COVID-19: a renewed mission for digital literacy. Library Management, 42(4/5), 266–276. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1108/LM-09-2020-0131

Pelchen, L. (2024, March 1). Internet Usage Statistics In 2024 – Forbes Home. Forbes. Retrieved June 29, 2024, from https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/internet-statistics/

Schraer, R., Goodman, J., & Menon, S. (2021, October 6). Ivermectin: How false science created a Covid 'miracle' drug. BBC. Retrieved June 29, 2024, from https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58170809

SinhaRoy, S. (2021, September 1). Defenders of Patron Privacy. American Libraries Magazine. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2021/09/01/defenders-of-patron-privacy/

Storozhuk, A. (2024, May 6). What Is Sponsored Content? Everything You Need to Know. PRNEWS.io. Retrieved June 13, 2024, from https://prnews.io/blog/33-what-sponsored-content-is-and-what-it-isnt.html

Torres, J. (2022). POWERFUL PARTNERSHIPS: On the critical role of libraries and librarians, and how they can work with literacy educators to nurture students’ reading lives. Literacy Today (2411-7862), 39(4), 26–29.

All images (except the ForbesHome internet access chart) licensed through Adobe Stock.