Date: 24th September 2018 Venue: Educational Technology Division Pahang, Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia

1. Keynote for the International Malaysian Educational
Technology Convention 2018
Educational Technology Division Pahang, Kuantan (Malaysia)
24th Sep 2018
Just Google it!
Digital Literacy
in an age of
‘post-truth’
Dr Ibrar Bhatt
Lecturer in Education
Queen’s University Belfast (UK)
@ibrar_bhatt | ibrarspace.net | i.bhatt@qub.ac.uk
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/eaat4382.full

2. Established in
1845, 9th oldest
University in UK.

3. Focus
1. Understand ‘Digital Literacy’ through social practices
2. Apply this to Curation & Information Literacy
3. Using ‘Epistemologies of Ignorance’

4. How to look at ‘digital literacy’
Literacies are:
• Experienced within specific contexts
• Attached to professions, communities, and places
• Part of particular cultural histories
• Mediated by material objects and technologies
To understand digital literacies, you need a thorough exploration of contexts, and to engage with
them becomes a form of critical social inquiry

5. Controversies & Disparities

6. Curation, discernment & information literacy

7. Misinformation
“While the benefits of our hyper-connected communication systems are undisputed, they could
potentially enable the viral spread of information that is either intentionally or unintentionally
misleading or provocative. Imagine a real-world example of shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre.
In a virtual equivalent, damage can be done by rapid spread of misinformation even when correct
information follows quickly.
Are there ways for generators and consumers of social media to develop an ethos of
responsibility and healthy scepticism to mitigate the risk of digital wildfires?”
(World Economic Forum Report 2013: p. 11)

8. Social media
The rise of social media as the main source of information, news and views.
Source: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016)

9. ‘Fake News’
Silverman et al. (2016)
See also Del Vicario et al. (2016).

10. 2018 Digital Attitudes Report
How personal information is collected - 83% unaware
information can be collected about them that other
people have shared
Where news comes from - 62% unaware their social
networks can affect the news they see
How products and services make money - 24%
unaware how online services make money
(Source: People, Power and Technology: The 2018 Digital Attitudes Report)

11. Epistemologies of ignorance
Epistemology is, very simply, the study of knowledge and justified belief
Ignorance, by contrast, refers to the absence or lack of knowledge or awareness…
..how it is actively constructed and sustained for the purposes of domination, exploitation, or for
epistemic advantage
…how it is sponsored and regulated (by corporations and governments) and used to distort,
suppress or withhold knowledge.
Ignorance is performed as a social practice
It is observable through a study of digital literacy practices
(See Bhatt & MacKenzie, forthcoming)

12. Critical Curation
(i) problematising an issue or topic;
(ii) anthologising and aggregating information relevant to a topic and enlisting filters to
manage it;
(iii) applying subjective, editorial discretion to appeal to and reach a target audience;
(iv) adding value to pre-existing content by contributing new or extended meaning and/or
create a new narrative;
(v) presenting that data in the appropriately determined platform
(see Bhatt, 2017, p. 120)

13. Critical Curation
◦ Going beyond digital literacy as procedural competencies, to dealing with a
more contextually sensitive “digital naïveté”
◦ Nurturing a healthy skepticism, and tools to navigate and manage the
emerging media landscape
◦ Understanding why people from different worldviews interpret the same
piece of information differently & hypothesis attachment
◦ Curation as traditional stewardship (librarians, teachers, etc.)

14. Critical Information Literacy
Credibility Judgments. The reliability of information, and evaluations of author,
purpose, source, content, argument, and accuracy of online information.
Judging relevance. The importance of the information, judgments about its
essential nature: relevance of a topic, relevance of a website, usability of a
website, and currency.
Source: O’Byrne (2017)

15. Critical Information Literacy
Coiro’s (2017) Three Stages of Thinking Prompts for Evaluating Sources
1. Examine the claims and sources in one website/document
2. Cross-check the author’s claims with at least two other reliable sources.
3. Decide if these additional sources suggest the original author’s claims are true or false
See: http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/

16. References:
BHATT, I. (2017) Assignments as controversies: digital literacy and writing in classroom practice, Routledge Research in Literacy
BHATT, I. & MACKENZIE (forthcoming) Just Google it: digital literacy and the epistemology of ignorance, Teaching in Higher
Education [special issue on “Experts, knowledge and criticality in the age of ‘alternative facts’: re-examining the contribution of
higher education”
COIRO, J. (2017) Teaching Adolescents How to Evaluate the Quality of Online Information. Available at:
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/evaluating-quality-of-online-info-julie-coiro Accessed Oct 10, 2017
DEL VICARIO et al. (2016) The spreading of misinformation online. Proceeding of the National Academies of Science, January
HOWELL, L (2013) Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world. WEF Report 2013. Available at http://reports.weforum.org/global-
risks-2013/risk-case-1/digital-wildfires-in-a-hyperconnected-world/ . Accessed Oct 10, 2017.
O’BYRNE (2017) Develop an assessment of critical online information literacies. Available at: http://wiobyrne.com/critical-online-
information-literacies/#1502397062469. Accessed Oct 10, 2017
SILVERMAN et al. (2016) Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate.
Available at: Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-
analysis?utm_term=.xgAP8P4Mjo#.ch6GwGv41X Accessed Accessed Oct 10, 2017
VOSOUGHI et al (2018) The spread of true and false news online, Science 359, 1146.

17. Dr Ibrar Bhatt
Lecturer in Education
@ibrar_bhatt
i.bhatt@qub.ac.uk
ibrarspace.net