Using a Critical Internet Literacy perspective to assess students' Internet searching activity

1. “You don’t know whether it’s all true”: using a
critical literacy perspective to develop a
taxonomy of UK school students’ judgments
when searching the internet
Colin Harrison and Chloë Patterson
University of Nottingham

2. Background:
The Internet is a dangerous place:
1990 Tim Berners-Lee sets up the
WorldWideWeb with the intention of
creating a platform for ‘the free and
open worldwide exchange of
information’ (Berners-Lee and Cailliau,
1990).
2018 Berners-Lee expresses alarm at
three trends: ‘Fake news’, Personal
surveillance, cyber warfare (2018).
2022. If 'truth' is contextual, contested
and geographical, what are the
implications for teaching critical digital
literacy?

3. The Internet owns
the knowledge- it
will tell me what is
true....

4. Truth is red!
No! Truth is blue!!!

5. Theoretical Background:
1. Critical discourse analysis (Freire, 1970; Fairclough, 1989;
Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000)
- All education is political; education is never a neutral act.’
(Freire, 1970, p19)
- Pedagogy should lead to both emancipation and action
- Critical literacy does not simply read the world, it rewrites it. It
changes the world.
2. Critical Digital Literacy (CDL)
- digital literacy is not just about skills; it involves three areas:
technical, cognitive, socio-emotional (Ng, 2012)

6. Data collection:
Ng (2012) and many subsequent
digital literacy researchers
based their CDL scales on factor
analysis of student self-report
questionnaire data....
This IRB-approved study
positions students as
research partners; with
their on-task discourse as the
primary data (Somekh, 2002;
Dwyer, 2010)

7. Data collection:
1. Five triads of Grade 4 students
(navigator, evaluator, manager)
recorded their Internet searching
of six sites to answer the question
'How many stars can you see in
the night sky?' (5 x 25 mins)
2. Four focus groups of Grade 8
and Grade 9 students recorded
their responses to two search
tasks, one on George Orwell, and
one on the question 'How many
stars can you see in the night
sky?' (4 x 25 mins)
'Where can we see evidence of critical digital literacy in action?'

8. A grounded theory analysis of Critical Digital Literacy was developed, following Einav,
Robinson & Fox (2013) and based on a triple analysis of 225 mins of audio (Strauss and
Corbin, 1998/2014).
The open coding identified discourse segments related to discussion of
- search terms (what search terms should we use, and why?)
- navigation (where to click next, and why?)
- reliability of data/site (where is confirmation of our search results?)
- trustworthiness of data/site (why should we trust these results?)
After axial coding, the discourse segments classified into four groups, which were on a
rough continuum from naïve to thoughtfully critical:
1. Ingenuous (naïve, unquestioning, point/click, selecting the first site offered)
2. Multimodal (recognizing the need for information from additional
sources/confirmatory information/fresh search terms/rechecking earlier results)
3. Circumspect (showing caution about a site or source; caution over invited links)
4. Ambivalent (showing critical awareness of 'truth', judging ideology, remaining doubtful
when faced with conflicting results)

9. Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?
1. Ingenuous (naïve, unquestioning, point/click, selecting the first site offered)
Elementary school:
Hannah: This is a horoscope, but I do trust it…it's probably true.
High school:
Jeffrey: It's asking me to accept cookies, so I usually go 'Accept all'.
Charlie: When you do a search, it's usually good to look at the top ones first- if it comes up first that means it's usually
reliable to get information off. It's like Google is singling it out, that's one you need to look at.

10. 2. Multimodal (recognizing the need for additional/confirmatory information/fresh search terms/rechecking earlier site)
Elementary school:
Megan: Let's look at another [website] and see if we get different answers.
Ben: Let's just double check, and look at the last two [sites] again.
Amie: I think we should go back [to the previous site] to check.
Bernadette: Are there any other words we can use for this [search]?
High school:
Jessica: I would click on quite a few links to see if they match up, to be sure about it.
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

11. 3. Circumspect (showing caution about a site or source; caution over invited links)
Elementary school:
Maddison: Sometimes you can't trust Wikipedia- anyone can go on there and change words.
Maddison: Can we trust this? It's too informal.
Antonio: Then there's these adverts…. I definitely don't trust this…. And they're asking me to 'like' them on Facebook….
High school:
Jeffrey: Wikipedia isn't a reliable website- 'cos people can change it.
Zara: I find it quite irritating if there's a pop-up straight away, and they ask you to click on a different link.
Alexander: I wouldn't click in the first link that comes up (on Google) You need to look at the little bit underneath. That
might tell you what you really want to know. I would scroll down first.
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

12. 4. Ambivalent(showing critical awareness of the uncertainty of 'truth', intentionality/doubtful content)
Elementary school:
Sarah: Which of these two [sites] could be truer?
Jessica: I don't know whether to trust it, because it's using all scientific words, but you don't know whether it's all true.
Chlöe: They're both relevant, but I don't know whether they're true.
Hildergard: It's talking about star signs… Aren't they basically superstitions? It's like religion. Can we trust it? No.
High school:
Charlie: There's often adverts…. If there's lots of adverts for the same thing, then maybe [the site] is not reliable.
Zara: If I'm on Wikipedia and it says 'Not secure', I wouldn't use it. I'd try to go on a different web site.
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

13. 4. Ambivalent(showing critical awareness of the uncertainty of 'truth', intentionality/doubtful content)
Elementary school:
Sarah: Which of these two [sites] could be truer?
Jessica: I don't know whether to trust it, because it's using all scientific words, but you don't know whether it's all true.
Chlöe: They're both relevant, but I don't know whether they're true.
Hildergard: It's talking about star signs…Aren't they basically superstitions? It's like religion. Can we trust it? No.
High school:
Charlie: There's often adverts…. If there's lots of adverts for the same thing, then maybe [the site] is not reliable.
Zara: If I'm on Wikipedia and it says 'Not secure', I wouldn't use it. I'd try to go on a different web site.
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

14. Problems with this presentation:
• A problematic and woolly definition of Critical Digital
Literacy
• A small data sample, and a somewhat opaque procedure
for selecting CDL discourse examples
• In any event, it's problematic to even try to suggest a
'scale' of Critical Digital Literacy
• A problematic set of sub-scale headings (I-M-C-A)
• Even if we accept Harrison and Patterson's idiosyncratic
set of subscale headings, many of the discourse segments
could be placed under different subscale headings
• … and where do the presenters offer any solution to the
problem of the Balkanisation of epistemology?
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

15. Problems with this presentation:
• A problematic and woolly definition of Critical Digital
Literacy
• A small data sample, and a somewhat opaque
procedure for selecting CDL discourse examples
• In any event, it's problematic to even try to suggest a
'scale' of Critical Digital Literacy
• A problematic set of sub-scale headings (I-M-C-A)
• Even if we accept Harrison and Patterson's
idiosyncratic set of subscale headings, many of the
discourse segments could be placed under different
subscale headings
• … and where do the presenters offer any solution to
the problem of the Balkanisation of epistemology?
?
?
Haven't we been looking at critical digital literacy in action?
And doesn't looking at Circumspection and Ambivalence give us a toe-hold on
the problem of dealing with the Balkanisation of epistemology?
Nevertheless...
Is this evidence of critical digital literacy in action?

16. “You don’t know whether it’s all true”: using a
critical literacy perspective to develop a
taxonomy of UK school students’ judgments
when searching the internet
Colin Harrison and Chloë Patterson
University of Nottingham