Information and media literacy are cornerstones in the fight against dis/mis-information. CILIP continues to lead campaigns and projects to raise awareness of their value, especially in light of the recent attack on Spellow Hub Library in Liverpool.

#FactsMatter is a long-standing joint campaign led by the CILIP Information Literacy Group (ILG) with support from CILIP and other CILIP Special Interest Groups. It aims to help the public, businesses and government improve their resilience to fake news and mis/dis-information by developing critical skills and information literacy.

We believe the impact of fake news and mis/dis-information on our democracy constitutes a public health crisis, and that countering them effectively depends on large-scale, evidence-informed interventions to improve the ways in which people engage with and share information online.

Proper regulation is also critical, including of new technologies and platforms.

As a political strategy, populism has always sought to take advantage of people’s fears. Throughout history, it has found fertile ground in nations either where education is devalued or where it has managed to persuade people to feel wronged and afraid rather than empowered to think critically.

The only lasting antidote to populism is critical literacy. CILIP members have a professional duty to help the public arm themselves against mis- and dis-information, and to see informed scepticism as the root of strong democracies.

The experience of the past few years has demonstrated that librarians and information professionals alone cannot turn the tide on a lack of critical literacy in the general population.

We must work with teachers, policymakers, regulators, and parents and carers to re-establish the principle that a true universal education must equip children and young people with the complex digital and information literacies needed to thrive in the modern world.

CILIP is a founder member of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance (MILA), the cross-sector alliance founded to help people lead happier, healthier and safer lives online.

CILIP believes that media and information literacy is as essential in today’s connected world as reading literacy has been for the past century. Through the Media and Information Literacy Alliance, we are working to provide information and resources on how information professionals can help their users develop their own resilience against fake news and disinformation.

Find out more about MILA