How Students Engage with News

The newest survey from Project Information Literacy, focused on the news engagement practices of college students. For those of you not familiar with Project Information Literacy (PIL), is a nonprofit research institute, that conducts scholarly studies about how students find, evaluate, and select information for use in courses and everyday life.

The study, which summarized the findings from a sample of 5,844 students from 11 colleges and universities from the United States, was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and and Harvard Graduate School of Education. It is available here in full, but I'd like to share a few takeaways:

1. Students are multi-modal. Meaning, they get their news from various sources (read: social media), depending on what they use it for. That's great news! As the study references, it was only 10 years ago, we were worrying about students' use of Wikipedia as a viable source for information. That was the library version of training-wheels as far as evaluation of sources goes! Now we have to be ready to help students who will only continue to get their news from social media, once they graduate. Creating "lifelong" critical thinkers is a mission of the library as well as the college as a whole, so we are well placed in serving our community in the future.
   
2. Professors are key influencers in their students’ lives, according to this study’s findings and previous research. Almost two-thirds of the survey respondents (62%) said they depended on news stories their professors recommended for academic assignments, and 38% relied on professors’ news suggestions in their personal lives (student responses to question 11 in the study).  But...there were others that said they distrusted recommended resources because of bias. This is also great news! Students are aware of the basics of evaluation, like bias. Now we just need to deepen their understanding.
3. Students in the survey commented that they spent more time evaluating news for bias and content, then actually reading the "news." While that might sound a bit sad, it also sounds like students have started from a place of persistence and grit in their evaluation practice. While it may take a bit of sifting and maybe even some detective work, coming to find viable news sources is a skill students know they need to have.

While I think these points can offer an optimistic view, I think it also reflects the need for us as educators, to help students navigate the field of news and news sources. Librarians are here to help students process and interpret the "glut of information they encounter" as they are continually marketed to and influenced by the social world around them.

The newest study Project Information Literacy is undertaking for 2019, called the Algo Report, will look at the impact of algorithms and hidden coding in our everyday lives, and how this affects the course of research and behavior in "both helpful and unhelpful ways." I look forward to sharing the results. 

Survey information found at Project Information Literacy, created with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.