Case studies and pervasive instruction

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether journalism education techniques can be adapted for use in the information literacy classroom as a means of teaching the ethical use of information. Design – The author uses personal experience as a journalist and graduate of journalism education programs to examine the similarities between journalism pedagogy and information literacy and whether any aspect of journalism pedagogy is transferrable to the information literacy classroom. Findings – Journalism educators deliver a potent anti-plagiarism message using case studies and “war stories” from the newsroom delivered through the pervasive instruction method or stand-alone ethics class. Using case studies from a variety of different disciplines in information literacy classes could help students make a stronger connection between honest writing in all subjects. However, until information literacy is taught more widely in libraries as semester-long classes, it would be difficult to use journalism’s pervasive method of instruction. The same holds true with the stand-alone class, which does not appear to be used as a part of information literacy education. Originality/value – Given the many commonalities between journalism pedagogy and information literacy, there have been very few attempts to see whether it would be efficacious to adapt journalism education’s methodology to the information literacy classroom.

Journalism Education and Fake News

“…Findings show there are fewer papers in the field of journalism education focusing solely on that topic, while many of them contextually frame the issue within other aspects of communication sciences. These include research into the attitudes of journalism students (Jackson, Thorsen and Reardon, 2019), media and journalism literacy (Brayton and Casey, 2018), employed journalists' information credibility associated with behavior verification (Vergeer, 2018), news values in communication and education (Gurba, Kaczmarczyk and Pajchert, 2020), the causes of that phenomenon as a consequence of a broader social issue (Chavarro Cardozo, Pacho and Vargas, 2018), journalism education methods as IL teaching in libraries (Noe, 2015), the crisis of contemporary journalism (Curran, 2019), and its future (Bebawi and Evans, 2019), the type of news in practice (Glogger, 2018), the public's trust in news media (Fisher, 2018), professional journalistic identity and ethics (Egbujor, 2018), journalists' perception of the fake news and etics (Blanco-Herrero and Arcila-Calderón, 2019), theoretical models and concepts (Rubin, 2019), environmental journalism (Gillam, 2020), democratic processes (Mohammed, Adamu and Kolo Lawan, 2019), revision of the curricula by journalism educators (Kothari and Hickerson, 2020), etc.…”