Information Literacy at UA-PTC
UA-PTC is committed to the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education as established by the Association of College and Research Libraries and endorsed by the National Forum on Information Literacy. Therefore, all courses will incorporate an information literacy component so that, by graduation, all students will be able to recognize the need for information, then locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information in an ethical manner. Information literacy encompasses critical thinking, research, media, technology, health, business, and visual literacy skills to produce lifelong learners who can make informed decisions in the workplace and in their personal lives
Identifying and Evaluating Misinformation
A librarian lecture on misinformation and strategies for evaluating information using the CRAAP Test (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose). Recorded for a “Digital Cultures” course at the University of Utah.
Video produced by Rebekah Cummings, Digital Matters Librarian, University of Utah J.Willard Marriott Library. Used with permission.
Books on Misinformation and Disinformation @ UA-PTC Libraries
Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies by
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.
Call Number: Ottenheimer - North Library 2nd Floor Circulation Shelves PN4784.F27 B37 2018ISBN: 9781538108895
Messing with the Enemy by
A former FBI Special Agent, U.S. Army officer and leading cyber-security expert offers a devastating and essential look at the misinformation campaigns, fake news, and electronic espionage operations that have become the cutting edge of modern warfare--and how we can protect ourselves and our country against them. Clint Watts electrified the nation when he testified in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. In Messing with the Enemy, the counterterrorism, cybersecurity and homeland security expert introduces us to a frightening world in which terrorists and cyber criminals don't hack your computer, they hack your mind. Watts reveals how these malefactors use your social media information and that of your family, friends and colleagues to map your social networks, identify your vulnerabilities, master your fears and harness your preferences. Thanks to the schemes engineered by social media manipulators using you and your information, business executives have coughed up millions in fraudulent wire transfers, seemingly good kids have joined the Islamic State, and staunch anti-communist Reagan Republicans have cheered the Russian government's hacking of a Democratic presidential candidate's e-mails. Watts knows how they do it because he's mirrored their methods to understand their intentions, combat their actions, and coopt their efforts. Watts examines a range of social media platforms--from the first Internet forums to the current titans of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn--and nefarious actors--from al Qaeda to the Islamic State to the Russian social media troll farm--to illuminate exactly how they use Western social media for their nefarious purposes. He explains how he's learned, through his successes and his failures, to engage with hackers, terrorists, and even the Russians--and how these interactions have generated methods for fighting back against those that seek to harm people on the Internet. He concludes with a snapshot of how advances in artificial intelligence will make future influence even more effective and dangerous to social media users and democratic governments worldwide. Shocking, funny, and eye-opening, Messing with the Enemy is a deeply urgent guide for living safe and smart in a super-connected world.
Call Number: Ottenheimer - North Library 2nd Floor Circulation Shelves U163 .W399 2018ISBN: 9780062795984
Bunk by
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction "There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential."--Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue's gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers--from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump.Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of "truthiness" where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
Call Number: Ottenheimer - North Library 2nd Floor Circulation Shelves HV6691 .Y674 2017ISBN: 155597791X
Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights by
The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere and academic publications. Yet, until now, a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new terrain has been noticeably missing. Celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled twelve seminal pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Influential commentators provide a comprehensive portrait.
Call Number: Ottenheimer - North Library 2nd Floor Circulation Shelves PN4867.2 .W54 2011ISBN: 1595585486
News of the World? by
Do the great British public get the press the "Red Tops" think they deserve? Or are the tabloids' pious protestations of public interest really just a self-serving attempt to halt declining circulation? Peter Burden examines the News of the World's performance--with its Fake Sheikh and the illegal mobile phone tapping, which lead to a jail sentence for royal reporter Clive Goodman and the resignation of the editor. Burden also highlights the papers hypocrisy when Mazher Mahmood, the Fake Sheikh, was himself unmasked. This is a book for everyone concerned about standards in British tabloid journalism and people who care about privacy rights and the debate over serving the Public Interest versus the interest of the public.
Call Number: Online eBookISBN: 1908646446
Misinformation and Disinformation and Research Assignments
As you work on research papers and projects you will want to use credible, truthful sources to support your points. Using sources of 
misinformation or disinformation, even by accident, will weaken your arguments, undermine your credibility, and may result in a lower grade on your research assignment. Here are some ways you can avoid misinformation and disinformation in your academic work.
Evaluating Sources for Credibility
Search Tips to Avoid Using Fake News Misinformation and Disinformation In Your Research Assignments
Nothing is foolproof, but there are a few steps you can take to avoid, or at least minimize the likelihood, of using fake news sources in your papers and projects.
1. Try searching for non-internet sources. For the most part, information in books and published articles in academic journals, magazines, and newspapers does not include misinformation or disinformation. Search for books in the UA-PTC Libraries Catalog here: Books & Media search
Search for articles in the UA-PTC Libraries databases here: Articles & More search
2. When searching 
try using a Site Operator in front of you search term to limit to likely credible sites. For example:
site:.gov will limit your results to government sites as in site:.gov immigration
site:.org will limit your results to organizations as in site:.org heart disease
3. Still not sure about a website? Try checking it against the Website Evaluation Worksheet. 
4. When in doubt, check it out. If you have any doubts about the information that you are using, try verifying it with another source. The When in Doubt, Check it Out box on the right has links to fact checking websites.
This source should be credible, but...
Sometimes you might have information from a source that would normally seem credible due to the source's position or affiliations with credible organizations, but you also find contradictory information from other normally credible sources. In these cases you might present information from all sources to show that there is a question as to which information source is valid.
For example, we have this account of a tragic accident from Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Other sources present more specific, although conflicting versions of the story. An 1810 account from Gammer Gurton's Garland by Joseph Ritson gives an exact count of the men who came to help, but doesn't mention horses at all:
Humpty Dumpty sate [sic] on a wall,
Humpti Dumpti [sic] had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore more,
Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before. 
To complicate matters further in 1842, James Orchard Halliwell published this version of the story which has Humpty Dumpty falling into a mountain stream, with doctors and builders attending to his injuries:
Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck.
With all his sinews around his neck;
Forty Doctors and forty wrights
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights!
Since we can't reasonably determine which version of events might be true, it is acceptable to present all accounts, while attributing the various accounts to their sources. For example we might sum up these three accounts of Humpty Dumpty's accident like this:
Humpty Dumpty had an accident which resulted in serious injury. Accounts vary but Samuel Arnold and Joseph Ritson stated that Mr. Dumpty fell from a wall, while James Orchard Halliwell said that Mr. Dumpty “lay in a beck” or a mountain stream. The accounts estimated that as many as 120 men and possibly an unknown number of horses came to his aid but were unable to restore Mr. Dumpty to health.
“Humpty Dumpty” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty. Accessed 3 Feb. 2017
Just a part of the facts
6 Tips for Identifying Misinformation and Disinformation
- Check the source behind the headline.
- Look for clearly false information elsewhere in the article.
- Spend a little time background checking the information.
- Look for source citations—and check them!
- Check that any graphs or plots make numerical sense.
- Keep an eye out for these fake news red flags.
To read more each of these tips or hear the podcast from Sabrina Stierwalt, PhD, Everyday Einstein here.
When in Doubt, Check it Out
Not sure just how much truth is in that website, tweet, blog, or Facebook post? Try checking the information with these sites:
These sites and many others can be found in the Verification Handbook, Chapter 10: Verification Tools.
The Five C's of Critical Consuming
1. Context
2. Credibility
3. Construction
4. Corroboration
5. Compare