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Information & Media
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INFORMATION CENTERS & LIBRARIES
AA09335
Heinberg, Richard OUR EVANESCENT CULTURE AND THE AWESOME DUTY OF LIBRARIANS (Energy Bulletin, October 7, 2009)
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How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge? Educator and author Heinberg notes that earlier civilizations over the millennia have disappeared, having given insufficient thought to how their societies’ achievements would be preserved. Although the sheer volume of modern cultural materials is unprecedented, in many ways our modern heritage is uniquely vulnerable, and large swaths of it are at risk of being swept away at astonishing speed. The problem, notes Heinberg, is digitization -– not just that storage formats become obsolete, but that the entire cultural enterprise depends on electricity: “digitization represents a huge bet on society’s ability to keep the lights on forever.” The real threats to modern information are systemic vulnerabilities, such as aging infrastructure and declining supplies of fossil fuels to power the electric grid. He says that the message is clear: don’t let books die, and promote skills-based education to keep the practical and performing arts alive.
IFLA: INFORMATION LITERACY SECTION.
International Federal of Library Associations. October 2009.
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Publications Listing
The primary purpose of the Information Literacy Section is to foster international cooperation in the development of information literacy education in all types of libraries and information institutions.
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UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION LITERACY: A PRIMER.
U. N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Forest Woody Horton, Jr. 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 103 pages]
Explaining in an easy-to-understand, non-technical fashion to senior and middle level public and private sector executives – in government ministries, private enterprises, academic institutions, and not-for-profit organizations – how to find, retrieve, organize, evaluate and effectively use information is what the publication is all about.
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UNESCO: INFORMATION AND MEDIA LITERACY.
U. N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. October 2009.
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Information and media literacy enables people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right. UNESCO’s mission in this area consists of fostering information and media literate societies by encouraging the development of national information and media literacy policies, including in education.
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INFORMATION LITERACY.
Association of College & Research Libraries. October 2009.
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The Association of College & Research Libraries under the American Library Association website provides the overview of information literacy and links to resources and ideas.
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INFORMATION LITERACY: ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR THE INFORMATION AGE.
The Information School of the University of Washington. Michael B. Eisenberg. March 2008.
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The paper offers an overview of Information Literacy (IL) focusing on three contexts for successful IL learning and teaching: (i) the information process itself, (ii) technology in context, and (iii) implementation through real needs in real situations. The author covers conceptual understandings of IL, the range of IL standards and models, technology within the IL framework, and practical strategies for effective IL skills learning and instruction in a range of situations.
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WIKIPEDIA & INFORMATION LITERACY.
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Eric Jennings. April 2009.
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Wikipedia is a new generation research tool that many students utilize. It is often in the top 10 results in a Google search. Since students use Google a lot, often before they use a library's online catalog or one of its databases, Wikipedia has become a big part of student research. Because of this, some in higher education (librarians, professors, and administrators) discourage its use and/or ban it, according to the author.
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INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
AA09319
Gedmin, Jeffrey BOOM BOX USA: SURROGATE BROADCASTING AS A TOOL OF U.S. SOFT POWER (Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 5, September-October 2009)
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According to Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, U.S. government-sponsored surrogate broadcasting of accurate and reliable news remains the most effective and cost-efficient way to promote democracy and advance U.S. security interests in countries lacking independent media. The objective of surrogate broadcasting programs, such as Radio Farda in Iran, is not to overthrow a foreign government -- “when informed citizens are free to choose,” Gedmin writes, “they invariably choose freedom over tyranny and prefer decent, accountable government to the arbitrary whims of authoritarian leaders.” Surrogate broadcasting plays a role in Afghanistan, countering the Taliban’s own information war, and in Russia, where public opinion toward the U.S. and toward democracy is ambivalent.
MEDIA
GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING AND MEDIA COVERAGE OF CORRUPTION SCANDALS.
National Bureau of Economic Research. Rafael Di Tella and Ignacio Franceschelli. October 2009.
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The report measures the extent to which the 4 main newspapers in Argentina report government corruption in their front page during the period 1998-2007 and correlates them with the extent to which each newspaper is a recipient of government advertising. The correlation is negative, according to the report.
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THE JOURNALIST’S GUIDE TO FACEBOOK.
Leah Betancourt, Mashable: The Social Media Guide. August 3rd, 2009
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Discusses how journalists can find leads and sources, and reach audiences, on Facebook.
PRESS ACCURACY RATING HITS TWO DECADE LOW: PUBLIC EVALUATION OF THE NEWS MEDIA – 1985-2009.
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, September 13, 2009
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“The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.”
AA09325
Brainard, Curtis; Russell, Cristine THE NEW ENERGY BEAT (Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2009)
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Climate change and energy issue reporting behooves journalists to collaborate within the newsroom and with news outlets to deepen expertise and resources to better explain these critical, complex topics. Varied regional concerns and new technologies increase the need for a broad knowledge base that allows for delving beyond the pronouncements of politicians or industry lobbyists. Covering energy well means giving a comprehensive “big picture” that can both inform and influence the public and policy makers.
AA09327
Cunningham, Brent TAKE A STAND: HOW JOURNALISM CAN REGAIN ITS RELEVANCE (Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2009)
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Journalism in America has been damaged by its abdication of an adversarial role in public discourse. Instead, it “mostly amplifies the agendas of others—the prominent and powerful,” maintains the author. He examines the changing dynamic of the news media and questions whether it has the ability to moderate public conversation and introduce new angles and ideas on national issues. Calling press objectivity “a trap” that lessens journalism’s beneficial impact, he says the press needs to be on the side of the people and become a platform for establishing a public agenda.
AA09312
Bowden, Mark THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY (Atlantic Monthly, October 2009)
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Unbiased journalism is being replaced by the work of “political hit men,” Bowden says, citing the televised treatment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor after she was nominated by Obama for the U.S. Supreme Court. The information on Sotomayor -- specifically the “make policy” and “Latina woman” comments -- wasn’t uncovered by journalists, but simply reprocessed by television news rooms from conservative web sites. The conservative Judicial Confirmation Network had gathered an “attack dossier” on each of the prospective Supreme Court nominees and had fed them all to the networks in advance, Bowden says. He decries the demise of the disinterested newspaper reporter: “What gave newspapers their value was the mission and promise of journalism -- the hope that someone was getting paid to wade into the daily tide of manure, sort through its deliberate lies and cunning half-truths, and tell a story straight.”
AA09313
Greenwald, Bruce; Knee, Jonathan; Seave, Ava THE MOGULS’ NEW CLOTHES (Atlantic, October 2009)
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Even before the Internet upended their industry, big media companies were turning in poor performances and disappointing their shareholders. The four tenets of media industry wisdom –- growth, globalization, content and convergence -- are myths, these authors insist. Growth has actually resulted in lower stock performance, and globalization doesn’t necessarily lead to higher profits. Creating superior content makes more money for the artists than for the media companies hosting their work. And finally, increased competition from multiple media sources and the Internet undercut the advantage traditional big media companies had of economies of scale and captive customers. The only real avenue to salvation that the traditional media industry has open is unglamorous: improving the efficiency of their operations.
AA09315
Rieder, Rem DAYDREAM BELIEVERS (American Journalism Review, August/September 2009)
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“America has become a country filled with people who stubbornly continue to believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts,” says Rieder, using as examples the persistence of people who refuse to believe Obama was born in the United States and those who believe that there are in fact provisions for “death panels” in health-care reform proposals. This situation makes it all the more critical for journalists to go beyond the “he-said, she-said” reporting of the past and not hesitate to reach firmly expressed conclusions –- with fairness, of course. Mainstream journalism has long been uncomfortable about making and expressing conclusions, but according to Rieder, “as long as that conclusion is based on carefully reported evidence, not ideology, there's no good reason not to do it.”
INFORMATION POLICY
INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
SOFTWARE PIRACY ON THE INTERNET: A THREAT TO YOUR SECURITY.
Business Software Alliance. October 2009.
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Individuals are turning to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to the report.
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THE INTERNET AS A DIVERSION.
Pew Internet & American Life. Aasron Smith. September 2009.
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Three-quarters of online economic users, those Americans who use the internet to keep up with news about the economic recession or their own personal finances, go online to relax and take their minds off of the recession, according to an April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
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WHAT CONSUMERS WANT FROM MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS.
The Brookings Institution. Darrell M. West. September 2009, 19 pages.
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The way in which cell phone users see their devices affects how they employ them and what future possibilities they are willing to entertain. The author, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at Brookings, explores what consumers want from new mobile communications in four different countries (the United States, Spain, United Kingdom, and Japan) and how these results demonstrate the virtue of innovation and open networks for communications policy.
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