Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age

(Hardback)

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Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives. Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information. Understand how to tell when statistics can be trusted and when they are being used to deceive. Inoculate yourself against the logical fallacies that can mislead even the brightest among us. Donald A. Barclay, a career librarian who has spent decades teaching university students to become information literate scholars and citizens, takes an objective, non-partisan approach to the complex and nuanced topic of sorting deceptive information from trustworthy information.

Reviews

[Barclay's] chapter on fake news provides a clear and succinct overview of the not-so-new phenomenon and the factors that have contributed to its recent proliferation (e.g., information overload, search engine optimization, and political bots). And his evaluation (and endorsement) of Wikipedia as a viable of information source is spot-on. * Publishers Weekly *
The callout section on the Dunning-Kruger effect (inadvertently) explains much of whats happening in Americas political climate; readers will find it chilling. Additionally helpful are chapters devoted to finding and evaluating scholarly information and a list of helpful resourcesturns out there are a lot more options than just Snopes.com. Librarians may find this a useful resource, but it should be read by anyone who wants to better understand fake news and to better discern its presence and defend oneself against it. Barclay addresses this timely topic in a readable manner, free from jargon. * Booklist *
No serious collection should be without this specific approach to independent, critical thinking and fact-finding. * Donovan's Bookshelf *
This book provides readable, practical guidance from a librarian and scholar of information literacy on understanding the trustworthiness of information in an era of fake facts. In Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies, Donald Barclay provides useful information about the tricks such as logical and statistical fallacies used to create false facts. The book will provide value to high school teachers, undergraduate teachers and students, librarians, and parents who want to guide young people and the general public to being information-literate. -- William Aspray, professor, Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Author Bio

Donald A. Barclay has been a professional academic librarian since 1990, having formerly held positions at New Mexico State University, the University of Houston, and the Houston Academy of MedicineTexas Medical Center Library. He is currently the Deputy University Librarian at the University of California, Merced, where he has been employed since 2002. As a librarian, he has decades of experience in teaching students how to become more information literate. Besides working as a librarian, he was employed for four years as a special lecturer in composition and literature at Boise State University and also worked for ten years as a seasonal wildland fire fighter for the United States Forest Service.