Arielle Bernstein & Chelsea L. Horne
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
Increasingly, online publishers and distributors of information – news sites, popular magazines, professional blogs – have implemented paywalls to limit the number of articles to which the public has free access. This has traditionally been true for scholarly sources and databases, and prompts deep questions about information gatekeeping and access to knowledge. How do students respond when confronted with a paywall? What are their thoughts about the limiting of “free” content available online? In this activity, students are invited to explore the implications of the choices that information distributors are making every day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, many national newspapers did not apply a paywall to Coronavirus related content. For example, The Washington Post made all COVID-19 related content free to the general public, “so that all readers have access to this important information about the coronavirus pandemic” (“Coronavirus”). At the same time, articles that explore other issues of significant and urgent national importance such as voter suppression and racism often still require a subscription for access. The goal of this activity is to engage students both in theory and in practice of key information literacy skills. To this end, students will identify and examine information literacy strategies in the first part of the activity, and then to analyze and support their own application of information literacy in the digital age. Here specifically, this activity asks students to think critically about the value of information and access to information in the context of “normal” and emergency scenarios. In essence, what truly is the value of information? And what do our decisions reveal about our values? This activity has much room for flexibility and can be adapted as needed by instructors to emphasize key aspects of information literacy.