Librarianās Book Addresses āFake Newsā and Critical Thinking
First impressions count, maybe now more than ever. But what if those impressions are based on lies?
Peopleās willingness to believe even the most outrageous āinformationā they get is so remarkable that researchers have been studying this phenomenon ā more recently given the current political divide in America ā and trying to explain why facts donāt sway peopleās beliefs.
Itās better to learn to critically evaluate information as it comes at you, argues Ā鶹ĪŽĀė°ę Deputy University Librarian Donald Barclay, whose new book ā ā is being released Friday, June 29.
āIāve been teaching people how to evaluate information for a long time,ā Barclay said. āItās about critical thinking. Weāre all guilty of being snowflakes in some way, but we have to be open to having our ideas and beliefs challenged.ā
The book is not political, he said, even though political disagreements seem to dominate American conversation these days. āFake Newsā is about helping people find trustworthy information in the digital age and urging people to be more critical about where they get information and how they decide whether that information is true.
In it, Barclay explains
"...We need to be rational thinkers in the day-to-day world, especially for decisions that have major consequences."
We have to be most critical about information that confirms our views, Barclay said, so that we donāt fall into whatās called āconfirmation bias,ā or processing only information ā true or false ā that confirms our particular beliefs. The danger is that we will act as though these unchecked beliefs are true.
āI think weāre going through an era in which our egos are being prodded ā a lot ā and thereās a real personalization of the news,ā Barclay said.
Itās not that propaganda is new. People have been promoting their views and agendas, sometimes in misleading ways, ever since people could communicate. Making people afraid or angry is a fairly sure way to get them to take action, Barclay explained.
Whatās different now is that itās much easier to spread voluminous amounts of bad information very quickly.
āIf one social media post hits, it can touch millions of people,ā Barclay said. āAnd it costs almost nothing to produce. But we need to be rational thinkers in the day-to-day world, especially for decisions that have major consequences.ā
Opinion should be based on real information, and not on questionable āevidence.ā
āIf someoneās going to believe the moon landings were faked, itās going to be hard to change their minds,ā Barclay said. āBut we really do owe it to ourselves and others to get the best information we can before we share it.ā
āFake Newsā is being published by Rowman & Littlefield, and itās Barclayās ninth book. Others include topics from helping other libraries serve online customers and teaching and marketing electronic information literacy to explorations of narratives about the Old West and mountain men.
But this is the first one of Barclayās books to be marketed to general audiences.
āWe feel Donaldās book is extremely necessary today because it will help people cope with this age of social media and 24-hour news cycles,ā said Charles Harmon, the executive acquisitions editor for Library and Information Science, Archival Studies, and Museum Studies at Rowman & Littlefield. āWhen fake news influences peopleās reactions and presidential elections, itās crucial that everyone in an informed democracy be able to distinguish true news from fake news.ā
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