Reddit as an Analogy for Scholarly Publishing and the Constructed, Contextual Nature of Authority

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of how the social news site Reddit can be used as an example of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education threshold concept "Authority is Constructed and Contextual." It posits that the construction and context of authority in the sense of Wilson's concept of cognitive authority is in the inherent structure of Reddit and that students can benefit from an example that easily links their personal and academic lives-a connection not always made when discussing authority in peer-reviewed publications or databases.

Close Look at the Concept of Authority in Information Literacy

“…Library scholarship that examines authority has followed several patterns. Some recent publications accept the Framework's definition and employ it to suggest effective teaching methods (Dudley, 2020;Foskey & Roper, 2020;Heffernan, 2020;O'Neill, 2021;Pullman, 2018;Ward, 2022;White, 2019) or conduct research on students' understanding of authority (Crist & Popa, 2020;Rosenzweig et al, 2020). Others, however, grapple directly with the concept of authority itself.…”