Information Literacy redux

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We're coming up upon a rough stretch in the land of NotADayGoesBy, at least in its academic neighborhood. Not only are we looking at a short week with a holiday in the middle, but as the semester nears a close, this weekend marks the official beginning of Panic, as folks realize that there are only a few weeks left and thus only a few weekends left.

But that's not the information literacy that my title refers to, although it very well could be. No, I wanted to join whatever juice this little blog generates to the project noted by Will and initiated by Tom Hoffman:

Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Hoffman makes some great points, not the least of which is the problem that so-called "information literacy" experts create by using a particular site as the example of what happens when you just take the first Google hit as representative of a particular search. In the process of demonizing this particular site (which I won't name here), they actually guarantee the problem that they're arguing against.

A couple of interesting comments at Hoffman's site raise the question of this particular tactic:

I am just not sure that google bombing is the way to raise one’s voice. It makes me think that we are shouting down the opposition rather than eviscerating their arguments. It does point out an interesting problem with the web–it is a level playing field where one may intellectually defraud with near impunity without serious consequence.

A couple of thoughts occur to me. First, I think that this ignores the degree to which any kind of search, as long as the results are ranked, constitutes an argument about the relevance of those results. And in that sense, the binary offered here, between shouting down and refuting, isn't as clear-cut to me as it's presented. Given the stakes of search engine performance, stakes that the site in question makes quite explicit, I'm not sure that Google bombing isn't just as valid as an argument.

Second, and more importantly, I think that we can describe the web as a level playing field in one sense, but in another, it's heavily inertial. Yes, we all have an equal crack at the venue itself, but in a very practical sense, my site about King would have an uphill battle to find itself on the front page of a search. Power laws privilege early entry, and with all of the reinforcement provided by info lit talks and sites, misinformation crowds out valid information.

It's an interesting question to me whether or not the G-bomb is a tool of "spammers and pornographers" and thus is out of bounds for the responsible among us. This is a question not unlike that of rhetoric more generally, though. In fact, it's Lanham's "Q Question" writ digitally. Lanham distinguishes between two positions:

  • the Weak Defense of Rhetoric holds that rhetorical strategy reflects the values of its users, such that a strategy used by spammers is thus tainted by that fact.
  • the Strong Defense of Rhetoric holds to a constitutive model of rhetoric, where those values are produced through rhetoric

I'm a big fan of that bit of Lanham's. From the position of a Strong Defense, Google bombing is still gaming the system, but it's not a priori wrong as a result. The question for me is less the strategy itself, but the uses to which it is put and the consequences of those uses. And if the consequence of this and other posts is to undo some of the wrong, I'm satisfied with that.

That is all.

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This page contains a single entry by cgbrooke published on November 19, 2006 10:59 PM.

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