The way that college students are introduced to research fails to encourage the ethical practice of open-ended curiosity so desperately needed in today's complex information environment. Drawing from a decade of Project Information Literacy's rigorous research studies, one surprising finding is especially concerning: A large majority of recent…

This paper presents a summary of the entire body of research, 2008 to 2022, from Project Information Literacy (PIL) on the strategies students use for finding, using, and creating information for college courses, in everyday life, and the workplace while navigating a vast, ever-changing information landscape. Major findings from 12 reports and…

As "research it yourself" becomes a rallying cry for promoters of outlandish conspiracy theories with real-world consequences, educators need to think hard about what's missing from their information literacy efforts. Setting aside the fact that the people most likely to share misinformation haven't been in a classroom for decades, most…

While educators believe reading is an investment in learning and knowing, what many are not considering is what reading analytically means to civic life in the digital age when many of the old gatekeepers of traditional publishing are disappearing. As new voices have emerged, and there is an explosion of reading material, there is also less…

What is the value of a graduate degree? It is a calculation: time plus tuition minus the chance of getting the right job after graduation. When the costs far outweigh the return, a new question might occur to graduates: Can I have my money back? Most prospective graduate students run the math before applying to a program, but it is next to…

In the academic imagination, depth and attention are the highest of virtues. But in pushing students to apply high-attention strategies to all incoming information, there is a risk of creating a new and dangerous shallowness. The author begins this article by talking about real-world decision-making. Looking at the structure of decisions can…

Racist/racialized malinformation is the phenomenon of how we are conditioned, socialized, and repeatedly bombarded with racist and negative images and stereotypes. These stereotypes are repeated and normalized until they become malinformation. Persistent malinformation comes through media, textbooks, religion, celebrated holidays, pop culture, and…

This document is the first report in a two-part series that explores U.S. media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak during the first 100 days of 2020. This first report examines the shape and flow of coronavirus coverage across time and digital spaces by using a large sample of stories from a range of news sources. Included in the report are…

This guide provides a wide variety of information literacy and news literacy lessons. It offers activities and discussion prompts that support learning in virtual or physical classes based on the first report, "The Shape of the Coronavirus News Story." The ideas and prompts in the guide are for different steps of inquiry and were…

This two-part series explores U.S. media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak during the first 100 days of 2020. This second report focuses on the visual messaging of the coronavirus story in the early months of 2020. Just as journalists have chosen their words to convey meaning about an emerging global crisis, photojournalists have crafted similar…

This guide provides ideas for class and personal exercises using the research findings from the second report in the two-part series, "Visual Messaging of the Coronavirus News Story." The ideas and prompts in the guide are for different steps of inquiry and were designed to build news literacy and strengthen information agency using the…

This supplement to the Project Information Literacy 2020 series, "COVID-19: The First 100 Days of U.S. News Coverage" is a select list of resources about COVID-19 misinformation to support learning about information and news literacy. Categories include: (1) Resources for building activities; (2) Readings; (3) Podcasts; (4) Videos; (5)…

This executive summary describes a larger report--the result of a national research effort exploring how much U.S. college-age students know about the way in which internet giants like Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook work, and by extension, how they affect society. Amidst the daily flood of digital news, memes, opinion, advertising, and…

This report presents findings about how college students conceptualize the ever-changing online information landscape, and navigate volatile and popular platforms that increasingly employ algorithms to shape and filter content. Researchers conducted 16 focus groups with 103 undergraduates and interviews with 37 faculty members to collect…

This report presents findings about how a sample of U.S. college students gathers information and engages with news in the digital age. Included are results from an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 U.S. colleges and universities selected for their regional, demographic, and red/blue state…