Information literacy skills of a conspiracy theorist

This session is a call to reflection in how media literacy and disinformation education activities are shaped and run. In May I'm concluding a 2023/24 Misinformation fellowship with the AKO Storytelling Institute in the UK and will present findings at this session. The starting point of my project is an observation - the narrative around building information literacy skills sounds very similar to how conspiracy theorists talk about their approach to research (Check sources, don’t immediately trust what you see, connect the dots, think about who funded the information, do your own research, etc). Are information literacy educators closer than we realise to the conspiracy theorists approach to engaging with information? Further, are into lit educators pushing some people into conspiratorial approaches, by conveying a distrustful approach to the information ecosystem, and giving them skills and approaches which resonate with conspiracy theorists?

The audience, especially actors working in media literacy education, will reflect on their approaches and consider what we can learn from conspiracy theorists in delivery of literacy education.