ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 sets the scene by presenting the book’s main argument. Information in contemporary society is characterised by extreme volatility carrying with it uncertainty regarding the control over public knowledge. Through the prism of the global coronavirus pandemic, a health emergency as much as an information crisis, the authors present a number of challenges, including fragmentation, individualisation, emotionalisation, as well an erosion of trust, all with implications for the organisation of society and, ultimately, democracy. Different national and international actors, governmental and non-governmental alike, and various professional organisations and also commercial players posit information media and literacy as a response to the situation by enabling people to assess the credibility of different claims. Yet, the case for media and information literacy is made in contradictory ways advancing different goals or based on different and sometimes problematic assumptions about the opportunities for critical engagement within society’s commercial, algorithmic information infrastructure. These tensions, the authors argue, can be made tangible through teasing out contradictory enactments and opposing claims about the central premises of media and information literacy and by positioning those as paradoxes. They further maintain that framing the various contradictions and self-contradictions forming around media and information literacy – and similar, related approaches – as paradoxes that need to be understood rather than resolved, contributes to unpacking society’s crisis of information by bringing the different interests involved in attempting to solve it to the fore. The argument is couched in a literature review bringing together research from different fields and attending to a number of prominent concepts. The chapter also includes a presentation of the material and method drawn on throughout the book.
