The document discusses the importance of empathy in information literacy, emphasizing that understanding others should precede information-seeking behavior. It outlines four key behaviors for fostering empathy—curiosity, closeness, awareness, and citizenship—and suggests practical applications for educators to integrate these concepts. The goal is to create responsible decision-makers who acknowledge the power of information and its impact on community and social justice.

1. All Hands on Deck: Social
Justice, Empathy in the Age of
Information Literacy
Ilana Stonebraker
Purdue University
@librarianilana
#waal2018
Extra credit: Think of an ideal information literate
person. Write down some attributes of that person.

4. Empathy Seeking
Behavior
Operationalizing
empathy in credit
courses
Decisionmaking
behavior
Elements of
community
Age of
Information
The Plan for Today

10. We have lived in the age of information.

11. But people don’t seem to be any better at
understanding that information. What is going
wrong?

15. More information is not better when it comes to
making decisions.

16. Reflection/Analysis
Information
Decisions

17. At the same time, things are changing in our
communities as well

18. Human beings want
and need connection,
and the internet is the
ultimate connection
machine.
DANIEL WEITZNER

21. What if we didn’t start with information need?
Ideas
facts
What if we started with empathy need?

22. Centers the
Learner
Goal is to
understand others
Is format
independent
Changes the
Learner
Cannot be un-
personal
Dovetails with
information skills
Empathy Seeking Behavior

23. Four Seeds for Empathy Seeking Behavior
Curiosity
Closeness
Awareness
Citizenship

24. Empathy Behavior 1: Curiosity

27. Curiosity
• Rekindling the Human Connection with Digital Holiday Cards-
Thursday 3:30
• Social Media and Persistent Question Asking- Thursday 3:30
• The Alternative Truth Project and Banned Books: La Crosse
Librarians Unite to Tell the Forgotten Story of a Librarian Hero-
Thursday 10:45

28. Empathy Seeking Behavior 2: Closeness

29. Why was business information always
about increasing the success of the
individual and not the community?

30. Student will articulate and
empathize with the diverse group
of struggles the Greater Lafayette
area faces at a local and global level
across economic, cultural, and
administrative dimensions.
– Students will find, organize, and
evaluate information about the
Greater Lafayette area.
– Students will identify sources to
learn more about problems that
are important to them.

31. • MatchBOX coworking
studio
• GE Aviation
• Campus Food Bank
• Moses Fowler House
• Fulton, Indiana
• Small Spaces
Lafayette
• Foundry
• Lafayette City Hall
• Meetings with Mayors

32. • What is Economic
Development? How does it
work?
• Cluster Strategy of Economic
Development Campus Food
Bank
• Incubators, Small Business
Development
• Critics of Economic
Development
• People v. Place- Based
Economic Development
• Economic Development, Social
Justice and Poverty
• Historical Perspectives and
Economic Development
• Community Development
• Diversity, Inclusion and Making
Cities Greater

33. Closeness
• LGBTQ+ Archives in Wisconsin- Thursday 10:45
• Advocacy, Outreach, Assessment: Launching the Library
Ambassador Program at UW- Madison- Thursday 3:30
• You’ve Got Real Mail! A Creative Global Experiment on the Value of
Libraries- Thursday 3:30

34. Empathy Seeking Behavior 3: Awareness

35. What do I know? What do I want to know?

36. System 1
 Fast
 Intuitive, associative
 heuristics & biases
System 2
 Slow (lazy)
 Deliberate, ‘reasoning’
 Rational

37. Bounded rationality
limbic system
and brainstem
(system 1)
neo cortex
(system 2)

38.  Seeing order in randomness
 Mental corner cutting
 Misinterpretation of incomplete data
 Halo effect
 False consensus effect
 Group think
 Self serving bias
 Sunk cost fallacy
 Cognitive dissonance reduction
 Confirmation bias
 Authority bias
 Small numbers fallacy
 In-group bias
 Recall bias
 Anchoring bias
 Inaccurate covariation detection
 Distortions due to plausibility

39. Why do I even care? Why don’t I even care?

40. “We have used our research to
determine our decisions. We have
thought more dynamically and
creatively and used our facts gathered
from research to make better and
more thoughtful decisions.”

41. Awareness
• Fake news and Government Information: Using the ACRL
Framework to Grapple with Credibility- Thursday 10:45
• Structures of Whiteness: Colonialism and Diversity in Academic
Libraries- Friday 9am
• Finding and Evaluating Online Sources in an Evolving Digital
World- Thursday 3:30

42. Empathy Seeking Behavior 4: Citizenship

43. If the goal is to make
students more
responsible, they need to
understand first that their
decisions hold power, and
that information holds
power over them.

44. And if we want the
students to understand
that their decisions have
power, we must also give
power to them.

47. Citizenship
• Integrating social justice in policy, practice, and culture: A
panel discussion- Thursday 2:30
• From Peer to Professional– An Evolution of Teaching
Information Literacy Instruction- Friday 2:15
• TEDx and Eliminating Library Fines: An Idea Worth
Spreading- Friday 2:15

48. Ways to use this in your
practice
Citizenship
Closeness
Awareness
Curiosity
Empathy for
Yourself
Localize problems
Show uncertainty
Investiage, don’t search
Encourage change
Invite students as partners
Build Togher

51. Conclusion Applications
Empathy Seeking
Behavior
Elements of
community
More information is
not making us
decide better

52. X
Knowledge emerges only
through invention and re-
invention, through the
restless, impatient,
continuing, hopeful
inquiry human beings
pursue in the world, with
the world, and with each
other.
-Pablo Freire

53. Thank you!
Ilana Stonebraker- Purdue
University
stonebraker@purdue.edu
@librarianilana
www.ilanastonebraker.com
Blog- Teaching on
Purpose

54. Discussion Question
•Think back to that idea information literacy
person. How do they seek empathy in their
information seeking process?
•How do you see empathy in your practice?
•How can empathy feed into social justice work?
•How is empathy limited in terms of social
justice?

55. Works Cited
• Anderson, Janna, and Lee Rainie. “The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World.” Pew Research Center:
Internet, Science & Tech, 17 Apr. 2018, www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-
world/# .
• Bruner, Jerome S., and Mary C. Potter. "Interference in visual recognition." Science 144.3617 (1964): 424-425.
• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018.
• Greenwood, Shannon. “Local Community Attachment and Regular Voting Connect Strongly to Local News Habits,
While Local Group and Political Activity, as Well as Community Rating, Show Less Connection.” Pew Research
Center's Journalism Project, 31 Oct. 2016, www.journalism.org/2016/11/03/civic-engagement-strongly-tied-to-local-
news-habits/pj_2016-11-02_civic-engagement_0-01/ .
• Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan, 2011.
• Oskamp, S. (1965). “Overconfidence in case-study judgments”. Journal of Consulting Psychology. US: American
Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/h0022125
• Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Vol. 2. Random house, 2007.
• Fake news is dominating Facebook. (2016, November 23). Retrieved May 17, 2017, from http://6abc.com/news/fake-
news-is-dominating-facebook/1621221/
• How Americans Navigate the Modern Information Environment. (2016). Retrieved May 17, 2017, from
http://www.norc.org/PDFs/75th%20Anniversary%20Research%20Project.pdf