Institute Highlights

The Institute wants to highlight the work of 2022-24 Seed Grant awardees Yvonne Eadon (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Stacy Wood (University of California, Los Angeles), on their project titled “The Truth is in the Stacks: Searching for Information Literacy in Conspiracy Theory Research Institutions.”

Eadon and Wood’s work attempts to understand conspiracy theories as complex phenomena with both historical roots and contemporary implications that require persistent community input to survive and thrive. In other words: conspiracy theories are a lot of work! In this project, Eadon and Wood are interested in how resistant research communities, or people doing collective research outside of mainstream institutional settings, interact with information resources and concepts of information literacy.
As part of the Institute seed grant, Eadon and Wood have worked toward developing a database of institutions trusted and used by resistant researchers and have begun an in-depth organizational history of the one of the longest-running UFO research organizations, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

We have enjoyed working with Drs. Eadon and Wood during this 2022-2024 grant cycle and are excited to see the final products of the database and the history of MUFON in the coming years!

Syeda Hina Shahid (The University of British Columbia, Canada and University of the Punjab, Pakistan) and Luanne Sinnamon (The University of British Columbia, Canada), who presented their funded research for the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) this past October.A first step in their Institute funded research project, Shahid and Sinnamon conducted a qualitative systematic review of the literature on scholarly communication and misconduct in the health sciences, identifying four areas of scholarly misconduct that they highlighted in their ASIS&T presentation: “in conducting research, publishing, following research protocols and determining authority.”

They are now interviewing health science researchers in Canada and Pakistan about scholarly misconduct in their contexts. Sahid and Sinnamon will leverage the insights from their interview data and the systematic review to inform the development of new approaches to information literacy instruction in health disciplines and across geographic contexts.

We are excited that they had the opportunity to present this research! If you would like to read more information about the work they presented at ASIS&T, you can do so here: https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pra2.886

Stephanie Beene (University of New Mexico) and Katie Greer (Oakland University), who received a 2022 seed grant from the Institute for Information Literacy at Purdue (IILP), recently published a new article in References Service Review titled “Library workers on the front lines of conspiracy theories in the US: one nationwide survey.” In the first national study of its kind, the authors examine how library workers in the United States interact with people who believe in conspiracy theories; the study evaluates the efficacy of various strategies librarians employ to address information disorder in their interactions with conspiracy theorists.

Beene and Greer’s IILP funded research expands on their recently published work by defining gaps in information literacy praxis and expanding current information literacy and metaliteracy frameworks to combat and prevent conspiracism.

We are so excited to see how their research continues! If you would like to read the article, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/gK26Rsqd .

Matt Hannah (Purdue University), who is part of a research team that received a 2022 seed grant from the Institute for Information Literacy at Purdue (IILP), published a new article in the Journal of Information Literacy titled “Information Literacy in the Age of Internet Conspiracism.” Hannah qualitatively compares the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy to social media posts made by adherents to the political conspiracy movement, QAnon. Hannah’s research spotlights striking similarities between the ACRL Framework and the information practices of QAnon before arguing for new information literacy models and future interventions that better account for information manipulation. These models and interventions will further allow individuals to navigate conspiracism and prevent them from falling prey to mis- and disinformation.

Hannah’s IILP funded research expands on this recommendation. A multidisciplinary team at Purdue University is examining current information literacy frameworks and public information needs to inform a new information literacy framework to respond to contemporary informational challenges.

We are excited for Dr. Hannah’s publication and can’t wait to see where his team’s research goes! If you would like to read his article, you can find it here: https://lnkd.in/gFnebPXn