Project Information Literacy: News About Students and News, #PILnews
Margy MacMillan, MRU, Project Information Literacy
With slides developed by:
Alison J. Head, Project Information Literacy, @alisonjhead
P. Takis Metaxas, Wellesley College, @takis_metaxas
Mount Royal University
November 2, 2018

News About
Students and
News
1

How do students find
news — and how does
news find them?

#PILnews

2

RQs

1. How do students define news?
2. How do they interact with news
on social media?
3. How do they determine
currency & authority of news?

#PILnews

3

Methodology

2. N = 37 follow-up phone interviews,
+1600 write-in survey responses

1. N = 5,844 online surveys returned,
11 U.S. colleges and universities

3. N = 731 Twitter screen names +
135K names from existing panel
4

Institutional Sample

N = 11 U.S. colleges and universities

#PILnews

5

To consider as we look at the findings:
How does news factor into your
learning and teaching?
What do you say/hear about news?

6

Students follow news selectively

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

7

Students are not "news-less"

N = 5, 844
* Note: N varies per response category in each question, due to missing data

#PILnews

8

Students are "multi-modal" + "multi-social"

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

9

Snapchat’s discover channel as “news”

https://story.snapchat.com/

10

•

Personalized

•

Click-bait look

•

Newspaper feed

•

Video games feed

•

Breaking news

•

Individual users’
feed

•

Advertisement

Given the importance of visual content,
how much attention do we pay to images?

11

Students care about the news,
but many find the quality of news disappointing.

12

News is necessary. And relentless.

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

1

From their perspective

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

1

News is a source of social currency
that requires time and effort to maintain.

15

Some 58% shared or retweeted news

N = 5,844

#PILnews

1

News is work; not a leisurely activity
What do you do before you share?

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

17

"I spend more time trying to find an unbiased
site than I do reading the news I find."
- A life and physical sciences major

18

How many of these do you do?
In the interest
of full disclosure,
you should know
I don’t read
everything
I forward……

19

Academic and personal news habits

….
BUT
….

N = 5, 844

#PILnews

20

Overzealous transfer (thanks KM):
“only place you should get news from for course
assignments is peer reviewed academic sources”
(container vs content issue)

21

News is fast, visual, social
and requires
TIME and EFFORT
to
Decode and Contextualize.
HOW do students develop news habits?

22

70% selected Professor
as a pathway to news.
Humanities - 77%
Comp Sci - 51%
Math - 43%

23

Discussion
1.

(HOW) does news factor into your learning and
teaching?

2.

What do students need to know about news as
consumers, creators, distributors?

3.

How do students develop habits for engaging with
FAST, VISUAL, SOCIAL news?

4.

What is our role?

24

Q&A

Thank you!

25

http://projectinfolit.org/news_study
@projectinfolit

Margy MacMillan
mmacmillan@mtroyal.ca
MRU Professor Emerita-to-be
Senior Researcher, Project Information Literacy
@margymaclibrary

Mount Royal University
November 2, 2018
#PILnews 26

Graphs developed by:
Alison J. Head,
Kirsten Hostetler, &
Steven Braun
For information on the full research team, please see
https://www.projectinfolit.org/uploads/2/7/5/4/2754171
7/newsreport.pdf

Image Credits

Please note, CC license for presentation does not apply
to images from Dreamtime.