Information Literacy Commons^™

On The Lookout For Lizards: Online Tools For Informed Democratic Citizenship, Robert Detmering, Terri Holtze, Amber Willenborg

Faculty Scholarship

In her recent essay,“Lizard People in the Library,” Barbara Fister argues that “systems designed to share information virally pose a serious threat to democracy.” As librarians and educators, we have an obligation to help students understand and navigate online platforms that spread misinformation at alarming rates and, in the process, contribute to the erosion of democratic norms and values. Unfortunately, research suggests we might be failing in this regard (Head, Fister, and MacMillan, 2020;Wineburg, Breakstone, Ziv, and Smith, 2020). In this talk, we will describe the development and implementation of the University of Louisville’s Citizen …