Should We Be Cynical or Skeptical?

Causes for public cynicism about government documents and the civic education cure

June 25, 2018

Yasmin Sokkar Harker
Yasmin Sokkar Harker explains some of the pitfalls of misinformation at the "Government Information for a Cynical Public" panel on Sunday, June 24.

What causes people to become cynical about government data? What can librarians and library workers do to help? And is cynicism such a bad thing, after all? All of these were questions that the panelists at “Government Information for a Cynical Public” attempted to answer on Sunday, June 24, at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition, moderated by Susanne Caro, government information librarian at North Dakota State University.

For Alicia Kubas, government publications and regional depository librarian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, it was the government shutdown in 2013—her first year as a government documents librarian—that made it clear how access to government information can be an issue for citizens, and a cause of cynicism. The content of many government websites was replaced with placeholders about the shutdown, and data portals were unavailable. Patrons were left asking, “If this information or data can disappear, for whatever reason, why should I trust it in the first place?” she said.

People tend to assume that when data is no longer accessible that it was removed for nefarious reasons, but in many cases the motivations are more benign, though the effects are the same. Some of the most common reasons she listed were:

  • Link rot or a lack of good archival practice
  • Government shutdowns
  • Changes in policy
  • Lack of funding
  • Only keeping newer data online and pulling older data

Patrons often don’t see this part of the process, so it’s up to librarians to talk to the public about the issue. Yasmin Sokkar Harker, student liaison librarian and associate law library professor at the CUNY School of Law, believes that to counter cynicism, information literacy as well as civic knowledge are essential.

“People need to question where information comes from,” she said, noting that cultivating healthy skepticism is the best defense against misinformation. Government information skeptics need an awareness of civics and the political process, an understanding of the sources of power to create and disseminate information, and the political motivations for doing so. Additionally, “for people not trained in the law, legal information is extremely difficult to parse,” Harker noted. “Access and education need to come hand-in-hand.”

Kubas has observed a stark divide between students’ assumptions about government information. Some of them want to just accept it wholesale, while others were extremely skeptical. “That very wide divide says we need more education,” she says.

As for librarians, “when we look at information that’s fishy, that we know needs to be unpacked, we need to inform people where it comes from,” Harker said. “One of the biggest things we can do is write,” whether it’s for a publication, blog, or libguides.

There is a sense that government information is meant to be neutral, but it’s impossible to separate information from the system that creates it, including the political structure and hierarchies of power. Through his lens as a teacher, Allan Van Hoye, government information librarian at the University of Colorado, Boulder, encourages healthy skepticism in his students by reminding them that government data is inherently political. While there is a more acute awareness of shortcomings in government information now, government information has always been biased. Van Hoye notes that biases are evident in past US Census questions, and omissions, especially those dealing with race or sex.

Kubas noted that it’s important as an educator to show where searches fail, that things break, and that things can be missing. “We need to not be afraid to admit that government information is political,” she says. “You just can’t toe the line with this kind of info.”

One positive aspect of the greater skepticism toward data, Van Hoye notes, is that the process of revising policies is more transparent now. These changes don’t always come with context, however, leaving researchers to find it through different avenues.

“Government information is odd in that it’s not like a lot of subjects where you just look under the heading and it’s there,” Van Hoye said. There are multiple sources and, in some cases, they may disagree. He encourages students to be careful about how they evaluate this information: some agencies work hard to be unbiased, but a Congressperson’s page is very likely to have obvious bias, for example. And, while a single person in an agency or office might not have individual bias, it’s important to look at the context as a whole.

The key to both access and education, and in replacing cynicism with healthy skepticism, is having an expert on hand to guide the process. “Once you can help people,” Caro said, “they can find what they need and question what they need to question.”

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