ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 explores the locations of responsibility for securing a stable reference point in common public knowledge. Media and information literacy tends to focus on the individual and the role of individual responsibility. This chapter asks what media and information literacy with interest in social aspects can look like. The chapter starts out with a discussion of various aspects of media and information literacy in an algorithmic culture, drawing on a discussion of algorithm awareness. The authors argue that a schism exists between rational information consumers and citizens, two discursively conflicting ideas as to how responsibility should be enacted in media and information literacy. In addition to media and information literacy, a number of other responses to the crisis of information and the instability of public knowledge are proposed. The authors provide a brief review of three responses, which are also offered: fact-checking, regulation of platforms, and public support for content production (e.g. public services) and dissemination (e.g. libraries). Examples from a broad array of international media and policy reports are brought together with interview material from the authors’ own study to show how the agency is distributed across the information infrastructure with implications for where responsibility is placed and how this responsibility is enacted. They maintain that media and information literacy, like digital literacy or fact-checking, when used to critically evaluate the credibility of sources, chimes poorly with the ongoing fragmentation and emotionalisation of public knowledge. This mismatch is grounded in how these approaches tend to be based on the assumption that they will be enacted by rational citizens who share a common interest in establishing the truth about an issue. The chapter concludes by capturing the resulting tensions in terms of a responsibility paradox.
