Librarianâs Book Addresses âFake Newsâ and Critical Thinking
First impressions count, maybe now more than ever. But what if those impressions are based on lies?
Peopleâs willingness to believe even the most outrageous âinformationâ they get is so remarkable that researchers have been studying this phenomenon â more recently given the current political divide in America â and trying to explain why facts donât sway peopleâs beliefs.
Itâs better to learn to critically evaluate information as it comes at you, argues ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” Deputy University Librarian Donald Barclay, whose new book â â is being released Friday, June 29.
âIâve been teaching people how to evaluate information for a long time,â Barclay said. âItâs about critical thinking. Weâre all guilty of being snowflakes in some way, but we have to be open to having our ideas and beliefs challenged.â
The book is not political, he said, even though political disagreements seem to dominate American conversation these days. âFake Newsâ 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 donât fall into whatâs called âconfirmation bias,â or processing only information â true or false â that confirms our particular beliefs. The danger is that we will act as though these unchecked beliefs are true.
âI think weâre going through an era in which our egos are being prodded â a lot â and thereâs a real personalization of the news,â Barclay said.
Itâs 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.
Whatâs different now is that itâs much easier to spread voluminous amounts of bad information very quickly.
âIf one social media post hits, it can touch millions of people,â Barclay said. âAnd 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.â
Opinion should be based on real information, and not on questionable âevidence.â
âIf someoneâs going to believe the moon landings were faked, itâs going to be hard to change their minds,â Barclay said. âBut we really do owe it to ourselves and others to get the best information we can before we share it.â
âFake Newsâ is being published by Rowman & Littlefield, and itâs Barclayâs 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 Barclayâs books to be marketed to general audiences.
âWe feel Donaldâs book is extremely necessary today because it will help people cope with this age of social media and 24-hour news cycles,â said Charles Harmon, the executive acquisitions editor for Library and Information Science, Archival Studies, and Museum Studies at Rowman & Littlefield. âWhen fake news influences peopleâs reactions and presidential elections, itâs crucial that everyone in an informed democracy be able to distinguish true news from fake news.â
Senior Writer and Public Information Representative
Office: (209) 228-4406
Mobile: (209) 201-6255