Cognitive Authority Research Articles

Ask Your Mother! Teachers’ Informational Authority Roles in Information-seeking and Evaluation Tasks in Health Education Lessons

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the pedagogical discussion on how to promote critical thinking among adolescents in modern media environments. It argues that teachers play an essential role in guiding students’ assessment of and decision between credible information sources. The study was carried out among eighth-grade health education teachers and students in a secondary school in Finland. Nexus analysis was used as a theoretical lens with which to analyze lesson observation data and teacher interviews. The findings indicate that teachers moved fluently between the informational authority roles of a cognitive authority and a trustee. Moments of perplexity in which teachers were not able to act in these informational authority roles created tension in the classroom; however, they also promoted diversified learning.

Artful instruction: pictorializing and printing artistic knowledge in early modern Germany

In the early sixteenth century, a new genre of epistemic and artistic objects appeared in southern Germany. For the first time, art manuals, ranging from instruction booklets to model books, put craft know-how into pictures and stabilized it in print. These slim and user-friendly art primers were made by artists for artists, at least in theory. They were designed to teach basic drawing skills, including simple geometry, perspective, and human proportions, and to circulate patterns. However, the manuals also taught how and where to look: their objective, then, was to develop a certain optical acumen through intense visual absorption. By examining some examples of the genre authored by such prominent figures as Sebald Beham or Erhard Schön, this article addresses questions on the teachability and display of artistic knowledge in the wake of Albrecht Dürer. It argues that sixteenth-century German art primers thematize, aestheticize, and embody modes of transmission and self-presentation in the ways they showcase practice. Despite their pedagogical ambitions and claims to be closer to practice than Dürer’s didactic model, early modern art manuals in fact created an ideal and condensed version of artistic knowledge: rather than mediating practice, they show what their authors understood practice to be. In the process, they powerfully championed the cognitive authority of pictures, and influenced the shape and format of later drawing manuals.

Becoming and belonging in interdisciplinary PhD research

PhD research has been depicted as a process of belonging and becoming. Through information-related activities, such as looking for, finding, avoiding or citing literature, PhD-students connect with people and texts that possess cognitive authority within their discipline or domain. It is assumed that supervisors in the discipline are the most important figures as regards the modelling of PhD-students scholarly identities. For instance, a widely cited textbook on doctoral writing states that “PhD students’ writing is shaped by discipline-specific conventions and protocols; by conversations with advisors who literally embody the discipline” (Kamler and Thomson, 2008, p. 508, cited in Gullbekk & Byström, 2019, p.20). The role of the library and the librarians may well be to facilitate discipline or domain specific information-related activities. In interdisciplinary environments however, PhD-students may experience a process of becoming without belonging and the domain-based cognitive authority of texts and authors may be negotiable. 
 In this round-table, we will explore the role of the library in interdisciplinary PhD-research. First, we will familiarize ourselves with select views on interdisciplinarity and reflect on variations among the roundtable-participants’ interdisciplinary experiences. Second, and more importantly, we will discuss complexities that occur in scholarly communication in a multi-disciplinary research environment where the students write article-based dissertations. We will explore the role of supervisors, librarians included, in a particular case where students must draw on multiple fields or disciplines, where questions of the cognitive authority of texts and of PhD-students’ belonging emerge as somewhat contested. 
 The case discussed in the round table is based on fieldwork conducted in an interdisciplinary department at a Scandinavian University. Participants may familiarize themselves with the case by reading the article Becoming a scholar by publication – PhD students citing in interdisciplinary argumentation (Gullbekk & Byström, 2019).

Delegitimizing Large Carnivore Conservation through Discourse

The legitimacy of large carnivore institutions to exercise truth-making power is assumed by constituents and other audiences. This study examines the power of language in shaping resistance to hegemonic truths about red wolf recovery in North Carolina. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of seven corpora produced by a discourse coalition comprising local, state, and federal actors. We demonstrate that these actors held seven cognitive interpretive repertoires in common (positioning; causality; contrariety; fatalist; falsifiability; victim; and big bad wolf). Findings indicate that repertoires influenced red wolf governance processes, reversed the risk narrative concerning recovery, split cognitive authority over red wolves in the public sphere, and set new, paradoxical limits for scientific inquiry. This study reinforces that language is power and, therefore, language is also legitimation. We conclude that researchers, citizens, and decision makers must attend to the ways in which language control contributes to legitimacy deficits through coordinated resistance.

Navigating Monsters: Credibility in the Twittersphere

The increasing use of OSM during emergency, or potentially threatening, situations creates conditions in which emergency planners and responders need a high level of investigative skill to weed through a dynamic information landscape to determine the quality of information to contribute to improved situation awareness. This weeding process transforms the big data environment of OSM to focused information retrieval. Inquiry into indicators of quality in OSM (authority, objectivity, currency, coverage, and glyphicality) during severe weather situations informs how OSM impacts the information behavior of the severe weather enterprise of the U. S. Specifically, this paper focuses on investigation into how a particular element of the severe weather enterprise in the Midwest, the integrated warning team (IWT), identifies relevant information in OSM during severe weather events. This paper describes the theoretical framework of an inquiry into information behavior of the IWT during severe weather events through the lens of cognitive authority theory (Wilson, 1983) and Bonnici’s (2016) CAF-QIS for understanding the phenomena of both credibility and trustworthiness in the Twittersphere where author is potentially unknown.

Reddit as an Analogy for Scholarly Publishing and the Constructed, Contextual Nature of Authority

This paper provides an overview of how the social news site Reddit can be used as an example of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education threshold concept “Authority is Constructed and Contextual.” It posits that the construction and context of authority in the sense of Wilson’s concept of cognitive authority is in the inherent structure of Reddit and that students can benefit from an example that easily links their personal and academic lives—a connection not always made when discussing authority in peer-reviewed publications or databases.

Is Automated Journalistic Writing Less Biased? An Experimental Test of Auto-Written and Human-Written News Stories

ABSTRACT By administering an online experiment, this study examined how source and journalistic domains affect the perceived objectivity, message credibility, medium credibility, bias, and overall journalistic quality of news stories among an adult sample (N = 370) recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service. Within the framework of the cognitive authority theory, the study found auto-written news stories were rated as more objective, credible (both message and medium credibility), and less biased. However, significant difference was found between a combined assessment condition (news stories with source and author information) and a message only assessment condition (news stories without source and author information) in the ratings of objectivity and credibility, but not bias. Moreover, significant differences were found in the objectivity and credibility ratings of auto-written and human-written news stories in the journalistic domains of politics, finance and sports news stories. In auto-written news stories, sports news stories were rated more objective and credible, while financial news stories were rated as more biased. In human-written stories, financial news stories were rated as more objective and credible. However, political news stories were rated as more biased among human-written news stories, and in cases where auto-written and human-written stories were combined.

Moving beyond the descriptive

PurposeInformation literacy has been consistently undertheorised. The purpose of this paper is to contribute in the ongoing theorisation of information literacy by exploring the meaning and implications of the emergent grounded theory of mitigating risk for information literacy research and practice.Design/methodology/approachThe grounded theory was produced through a qualitative study that was framed by practice theory and the theoretical constructs of cognitive authority and affordance, and employed constructivist grounded theory, semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation methods to explore the information literacy practices of language-learners overseas.FindingsThis paper provides a theoretically rich exploration of language-learner information literacy practices while further identifying the importance of time, affect and information creation within information literacy research and practice as well as the need for the continued theorisation of information literacy concepts.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper’s constructivist grounded theorisation of information literacy remains localised and contextualised rather than generalisable.Practical implicationsThe paper raises questions and points of reflection that may be used to inform the continued development of information literacy instruction and teaching practices.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to an increasingly sophisticated theoretical conceptualisation of information literacy as well as forming a basis for ongoing theoretical development in the field.

Negotiating research in the shadow of migration control: access, knowledge and cognitive authority

Negotiating research in the shadow of migration control: access, knowledge and cognitive authority

The Comedy of Reflexive Modernity: Reason, Religion and the Ambivalence of Humour

This article utilizes Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive modernity’ to account for the ambivalent view of humour in the public sphere: its celebration as a form of criticism of irrationality and injustice and its censure as a vehicle for the denigration of subordinate or marginal groups and identities. The article argues that the power and ambivalence of humour in contemporary culture can be understood with reference to the two key features of reflexive modernization: the demand for the discursive justification of all claims to cognitive and normative authority and the obligation to respect the equal rights of all individuals. Drawing on Beck’s distinction between a ‘first’ and ‘second’ modernity, the article uses the example of the Danish ‘Muhammed Cartoons’ to show that critical-emancipatory joking cannot simply lay claim to an ‘Enlightenment’ view of secular-scientistic reason in conflict with an atavistic and backward ‘religion’ due to the transformation of reason by reflexive scientization and the transformation of religion resulting from the effects of globalization and cultural cosmopolitization. The article draws on accounts of the comic practice of Muslim comedians and a consideration of the British TV sit-com Rev to demonstrate the possibility of a ‘religious’ joking that is thereby eminently ‘modern’ whilst respecting the values of human universality and individual dignity. The article concludes by reiterating the centrality of Beck’s theory for the understanding of the enduring power of comic representation to constitute a cultural reflexivization endemic in contemporary society and argues for the relevance of ‘reflexive modernity’ to cultural sociology.

Exploring the immediate and short-term effects of peer advice and cognitive authority on Web search behavior

An individual's Web search behavior can be influenced by a number of factors, including features and functions of a search engine as well as search education. In contrast to the long-lasting attention to the algorithm and interface dimensions of search, there is a lack of research concerned with the potential effects of user education on search behavior. To address this gap, we ran a three-session field-lab-combined study to examine the effects of user education from two distinct sources – peer advice and cognitive authority (operationalized as video-based student's advice and expert's advice respectively) – on Web search behavior in two different search task scenarios (i.e., factual specific and factual amorphous tasks). We also tested if these behavioral effects persist for a short period of time when the explicit search tips are removed. Using 185 task session data generated by 31 participants in two field and one lab sessions, this study demonstrates that: (1) both peer advice and cognitive authority are effective in stimulating immediate behavioral changes in Web search; (2) the immediate behavioral impact of search advice is broader in factual amorphous task than in factual specific task; (3) framing search tips as the advice from cognitive authority is more likely to generate continuing, short-term effects on Web search behaviors. This research has implications for the design of task-aware user education as well as the study of users’ interactions with IR systems in general.

Rethinking the role of the academy: cognitive authority in the age of post-truth

ABSTRACTThe concept of ‘post-truth’ is here explored within the context of education and educational technology. Contemporary political discourse is often characterised by a polarisation of political belief and scepticism about scientific and expert authority has become commonplace. We explore tensions between democratic and technocratic impulses in describing changes that are taking place in the way that authority typically operates in higher education. We analyse changing notions of academic authority to understand some of the implications for the practice of teaching, learning and administration. We argue that technocratic, administrative authority increasingly supplants cognitive authority and subject expertise. One result of increased emphasis on performative/administrative authority is the nature of authority both within the academy and the wider public sphere is changed. We examine the implications for pedagogy, curriculum and academic practice, suggesting that performative approaches to criticality, openness, truth and transparency offer potential routes to new constellations of cognitive authority.

Recognizing Second-Hand Phenomenon

The purpose of the study is to convey knowledge about the phenomenon of second-handdalam everyday life, at home, at work, at school, and in social environments residence. The method used is a critical analysis about human social activity. The results of the study showed that human knowledge is actually obtained through two (2) ways, namely, first, from his own experience; second, obtained from others. Both of these sources affect each other and compete with each other in the individual. The lack of stock in the individual ideas leads to learning from others to get to know the world. This phenomenon is called the phenomenon of second-hand, people recognize the world of others, rather than themselves. Conclusion: the knowledge of the world from what they see in their daily lives and from what they told others. Although one is never counted them, just that they think know what they are talking about, this is by Patrick Wilson named as cognitive authority.

When the Client Is a Former Auditor: Auditees’ Expert Knowledge and Social Capital As Threats to Staff Auditors’ Operational Independence

Auditees can play an active role in influencing staff auditors’ professional judgment and skepticism. Yet, although it constitutes one of the main threats to auditor independence, very little is known about the means and extent of auditees’ power during the audit engagement. To address this knowledge gap, our study focuses on a specific category of auditees, namely, auditees who have worked as auditors in large accounting firms. We interviewed 36 of these auditees and triangulated our findings with 11 interviews conducted with auditors. At the theoretical level, we conceptualize auditees’ influence over auditors as intentional and active through the notion of “social power” (Raven 2008). Overall, our analysis shows that the efficacy of auditees’ power during the engagement materializes through the mobilization of two main power resources developed during their time at the firms: (i) expert knowledge of auditing techniques and (ii) social capital. On the one hand, relying on their cognitive authority, auditees’ employ three different power strategies to constrain staff auditors’ operational independence: stage-setting, teaching, and questioning. On the other hand, auditees’ social capital can support the use of two additional strategies: attracting and monitoring. Our triangulation analysis confirms our findings and suggests that auditors may be aware of the threats to independence that auditee expertise and social capital pose. By focusing on auditees’ agentic capabilities — that is, individuals’ capabilities to consciously exert influence over the course of events — we reinterpret the pressures exerted by clients on auditors as the product of strategic actions, and discuss substantive consequences for independence risk.

Patrick Wilson

During 1965-2001, Patrick Wilson brought the acuity of a professional philosopher to library and information science (LIS) and became a major theorist in many aspects of knowledge organization (KO). This article, an extensive critical introduction to his thought, reflects the view that much of his work is of permanent value. He can be read for well-informed critiques of the instruments by which writings are organized for retrieval-the bibliographical side of KO. He can also be read for shrewd accounts of personal knowledge and behavior with respect to societal information systems-the social-epistemological side of KO. Indeed, in his work the two sides converge. One of his themes is the preferability of human consultants over bibliographies and catalogs for answering questions. He thus writes at length about the social organization of possible consultants and their degrees of cognitive authority in communicating what they know. Another theme is the desirability of indexing writings not only by subject but also by their possible utility in helping individuals. For that, however, he saw little hope. A third theme is ideal information systems. Broadly, he can be read for his clarifications of concepts on both sides of KO, such as bibliographical control, relevance, subject indeterminacy, information needs, information overload, librarians’ roles, and LIS as a field.

The Context of Authority and Sociological Knowledge: An Experiential Learning Project

In this innovative project, a social sciences librarian partnered with a sociology professor to embed the “Authority is Constructed and Contextual” frame into an upper-division sociology of poverty course. Students in this course participated in an experiential learning project, collaborating with local children on a participatory photo mapping project to document the children’s neighborhood. By working directly with community members in this field experience, the students gained an understanding of the differences between scholarly authority and community authority and what can be learned about poverty from each type of source. Engagement with a local community provides students with a direct understanding of the contextual nature of cognitive authority and can be replicated in a variety of settings.

The cognitive authority of user-generated health information in an online forum for girls and young women

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of one particular online discussion forum as a potentially authoritative health information source for its users. The concept of cognitive authority is used as a starting point for understanding information evaluation in this context. The focus is placed on the types of information users seek for from this forum, the ways they assess the credibility of information obtained, and their views on the impact of this information.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data were collected with a questionnaire survey from the users of a Finnish online forum for girls and young women (n=290). The data were analyzed qualitatively with content analytic techniques and quantitatively by using descriptive analysis.FindingsThe forum was found to offer girls and young women the possibility to receive health information from peers. It was viewed as an appropriate source for experiential rather than factual health information and used to find information on sexuality, bodily functions and diets, for example. Author-related cues, argumentation and tone, veracity and verification were recognized as means to evaluate information credibility. Credibility evaluation was found to be linked with conceptions of the forum and the type of information sought. A share of the respondents recognized the information obtained to have influence on their thinking or behavior.Originality/valueBased on the findings, it can be argued that the members of the online forum – individually or collectively – can act as cognitive authorities for other users. The findings cannot be generalized beyond this online forum, to Finnish girls or young women, or even the users of the online forum. However, they provide insights into the ways young people evaluate user-generated information in a particular online setting and domain of knowledge and as such contribute to research on cognitive authority, credibility evaluation and information literacy.

Development of an Integrative Learning Unit to Enhance Students’ Conceptual Understanding of Dissolution and Their Reasoning Sophistication

Chemistry education requires establishing connections between chemistry concepts and learners’ experiencesencountered in the real world. However, due to the abstract nature of chemistry which is regularly displayed in an isolated-fashionin classrooms, this results in the difficulty when learners utilize knowledge relationally and rationally. To ease this learning issue,a conceptually integrative learning unit incorporating chemical concepts of dissolution was developed, involving polarity,concentration, and chemical structure. The purposes of this study are three-fold. The first is to cognitively embrace students in thecontent in terms of factual and applied knowledge. The second is placed on the reasoning sophistication, which plays a crucial rolein problem solving, decision making, and data interpretation, by classifying it into three levels: Intuition, hybrid, and analytics.The third is to explore cognitive authority reflecting forms of knowledge which students lean towards when making decision:Direct experiences (first-hand knowledge) and learning from other people (second-hand knowledge). This research study wasconducted in a quantitative manner based on a pretest-posttest design with 79 upper secondary students. The results showed thatthere was a statistically significant increase in students’ conceptual understanding in both factual and applied knowledge, afterparticipating in the developed learning unit. In addition, over 20% of the students exhibited more sophisticated reasoning skills (i.e.hybrid or analytic level of reasoning). Furthermore, forms of cognitive authority underpinning the reasoning skills shifted fromsecond-hand knowledge towards first-hand knowledge after participating in the learning unit, which is considered as a morescientifically appropriate form of knowledge.

The Many Faces of Status: Audience Segmentation and Competing Effects on Pricing

Different research traditions have proposed three distinct mechanisms in explaining the influence of status of a market intermediary on price formation – certification, Matthew effect and cognitive authority – though there has been little prior effort to disentangle those mechanisms conceptually or empirically. Focusing on the relationship between lead underwriter status and U.S. equity IPO underpricing, the present study argues that these mechanisms have countervailing effects operating via different audiences – respectively the buyers (institutional and retail investors), the intermediary’s peers (other investment banks) and the sellers (issuers). We then empirically identify these effects using directed acyclic graphs (DAG) reasoning and structural equation modeling of the U.S. equity IPOs from 1986 to 2010. Our key contribution is integrating the various status-related mechanisms into a single framework, and in the process resolving long-standing mixed results of financial economists about the relationship between underwriter status and IPO underpricing.

Two sides of the same coin: Student justification for or against evolutionary theory

Students accepting evolution are likely to rely on science as cognitive authority (i.e. science textbooks and science teachers). In contrast, those not accepting are likely to rely on religion as cognitive authority (i.e. religious texts and religious leaders). A thematic analysis based on existing quantitative and qualitative studies has been carried out in order to propose a theoretical framework for a range of reasons contributing to students' acceptance and rejection of evolutionary theory. This article urges that instruction of evolution is more than the matter of delivering scientific contents. It also deals with personal worldviews influenced by different forms of cognitive authority. It is therefore important to put more emphasis on developing students’ learning skills to critically evaluate which source of information is scientifically appropriate, with full respect to religious belief of individuals.