Assessing the use of critical literacies in mis/disinformation literacy instruction

Abstract

In keeping with Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the theoretical perspicacity of Critical Race Theory, Lenoir and Anderson (2023) posit “technical solutions to political problems are bound to fail. Historical, structural, and political inequality—and especially race, ethnicity, and social difference—needs to be at the forefront of our understanding of politics and, indeed, disinformation”. The approaches to mis/disinformation in libraries and information studies have largely been grounded in two forms of literacy education; media literacy and digital literacy. Both media literacy and digital literacy offer a limited generic framing for engaging with digital information and myriad technology and fall short of providing the acute awareness of the systemic relationship that media and digital information platforms have with interlocking systems of oppression. This paper intends to identify the current application of critical approaches to disinformation literacy instruction to promote its adoption as a pedagogical practice in libraries and information studies.