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Monday
Aug072017

Get Digital’s new heatmap highlights large areas of digital exclusion across the UK

The Tech Partnership’s new Get Digital Heatmap, published today in association with Lloyds Banking Group, shows that large areas of the UK continue to suffer from high levels of digital exclusion, even though over one million more adults have gained basic digital skills since the heatmap was last published in 2015.

Common causes of digital exclusion are lack of skills or the confidence to use them; lack of access to infrastructure and fast broadband; the cost of devices and fees for broadband subscription and mobile data; and a lack of personal motivation to value the gaining digital skills as relevant and important.

Monday
Jun192017

The Road to Copyright Literacy: it's a journey not a destination 

Tuesday
May162017

CILIP launch #FactsMatter infographic

CILIP and the Information Literacy Group have today launched a fantastic new infographic on making informed political decisions, as part of the #FactsMatter campaign. Please share it widely!

CILIP’s #FactsMatter campaign for the General Election asks political parties and candidates to endorse the vital role of facts and evidence in public life. We all share a responsibility to be good consumers of news and information in political discussion, and as citizens we can take steps to be better informed before we go out to vote.

Please share this infographic widely on your own social media channels and play your part in making the campaign a great success!

#FactsMatter infographic

 

About the campaign

The General Election is the biggest decision the UK will make this year. Previous public votes have clearly shown the urgent need for reliable facts in political debate and the importance of reliable information and evidence for democratic decision-making.

CILIP‘s Facts matter campaign for the General Election asks political parties and candidates to endorse the vital role of facts and evidence in public life. We’re calling on parties and candidates and to take a public pledge that ‘Facts matter’ and to declare their commitment to running an evidence-based election campaign.

There is a growing movement to fight for evidence and facts in public life, which CILIP is proud to be part of. Facts Matter is a vital opportunity to strengthen public trust in our political system and institutions.

The CILIP Information Literacy Group is delighted to be involved in this campaign as part of its information literacy advocacy work.

Jane Secker #FactsMatterJane Secker, Chair of the CILIP IL Group

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the infographic and the #FactsMatter campaign; please leave your comments below!

Find out more about the CILIP Facts matter campaign

Find out more about the work of the CILIP Information Literacy Group

Tuesday
Apr252017

Inquiry into fake news: the CILIP ILG response

Reposted from CILIP ILG

Stéphane Goldstein, Advocacy and Outreach Officer of the CILIP Information Literacy Group and Executive Director of InformAll, outlines our recent submission to the inquiry into fake news that is being conducted by the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport.

In January 2017, the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport launched an inquiry into fake news. As is usual with such inquiries, the Committee invited submissions from interested parties, prior to compiling a report – which we hope will be published later in the year.

CILIP Information Literacy GroupThe CILIP Information Literacy Group, in collaboration with InformAll, submitted a response in March. Not only is this inquiry timely, but it is directly relevant to information literacy. Indeed, one of the questions posed by the Committee in its call for submissions was ‘How can we educate people in how to assess and use different sources of news?’.InformAll

In April, the Committee published our response (the list of the nearly eighty submissions made by a range of other bodies and individuals is also available here. Amongst the other respondents are Google, Facebook, the Guardian, the BBC, Research Libraries UK and the Open University).

These are the highlights of some of the key points that we raised in our submission:

  • Much of the current debate in this area is articulated around what Google, Facebook and others do to limit the spread of fake news, for instance through changes in their algorithms.  But although these often technological approaches are undoubtedly important, they fail to address the place and responsibility of users as consumers, creators and sharers of information. So the question we are posing is how people’s fundamental beliefs and commitments have an impact on the way that they relate to information and news; and what might be done to help them become more judicious in their approach to information and mis-information. This is where information literacy comes in.
  • In confronting fake news and misinformation, the search for evidence – founded on enquiry, questioning and research – is more relevant than the notion of truth. Truth is a subjective concept, and is not a helpful term when trying to address the challenge of fake news; it follows that the expression ‘post-truth’ is equally unhelpful.
  • A major part of any solution is a greater emphasis on the teaching of critical thinking, associated with information and digital literacy, in secondary schools – something that does not currently feature prominently in the curriculum. School students’ attitudes and practices towards information are often sorely lacking, but there is evidence to suggest a more discerning mindset can be fostered, given the right sort of interventions.
  • By and large, public policy in the UK does not properly address information literacy, and the recently-published UK Digital Strategy, in spite of its thinking on digital skills, conspicuously fails to touch on how to foster more critical and questioning approaches to online information.
  • Psychology can go a long way to explaining people’s propensity to believe fake news, and people’s powerful attachments to what they believe to be true can breed attitudes that are very resistant to evidence and facts. Cognitive factors are important in determining attitudes to information.

We recommend keeping an eye on the Select Committee’s webpages to monitor progress with their inquiry.

Monday
Apr102017

Fake news and the librarian's duty of care

From Infomation Today Europe 31st March 2017