Connecting with new information landscapes: Information literacy practices of refugees (original) (raw)
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Information Literacy and Social Inclusion of Refugees in Australia
2015
This literature review focuses on research into the role of information literacy in facilitating social inclusion of refugees in Australia. The "information literacy problem" is a recurrent theme in the literature, with substantial disagreement amongst theorists and practitioners regarding its definition and solution, so it has been necessary to outline that issue, to provide some context for the research on information needs of refugees. Some directions for future research are suggested, in conclusion. Submitted as assessment task for Masters of Digital Information Management, University of Technology Sydney.
Journal of Documentation
Purpose This paper presents the research findings of the “Syrian New Scots’ Information Literacy Way-finding practices” research project, funded by the Information Literacy Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the information needs of “Syrian New Scots” (the preferred name for refugees in Scotland), their habitual and adaptive information literacy practices and the barriers and enablers they encounter within their new socio-cultural setting via their interactions with people, tools and processes. Design/methodology/approach Primary data were collected via interviews with three Local Authority Leads for Syrian Resettlement and focus groups with Syrian New Scots in three geographical locations in Scotland: two rural areas and one urban. Syrian research subjects were also involved in a drawing exercise that helped to contextualise the findings. Findings The main information needs expressed by participants rev...
Refugee Youth Leverage Social, Physical, and Digital Information to Enact Information Literacy
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2017
A Review of: Lloyd, A., & Wilkinson, J. (2017). Tapping into the information landscape: Refugee youth enactment of information literacy in everyday spaces. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961000617709058 Objective – To describe the ways in which refugee youth use everyday information to support their learning. Design – Photo voice technique, a process by which the population under consideration is provided with cameras and asked to visually document an aspect of their experience. Setting – Social agency in New South Wales, Australia Subjects – Fifteen 16-25 year old refugees resettled from South Sudan or Afghanistan Methods – Three workshops were conducted. In the first, participants learned how to use the cameras and the protocols for participation. Between the first and second workshops, participants took several photographs of places, sources and types of information that were personally meaningful. In the s...
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 2017
The development of information literacy and learning practices in everyday spaces is explored.Data for the study was collected using photo voice technique. Data analysis was conducted using photos and analysis of group transcripts. Participants describe how they tapped into social, physical and digital sites to draw information in the process of (re) forming their information landscapes, building bridges into new communities and maintaining links with family overseas. Media formats were identified according to their appropriateness as fit for purpose, suggesting that the enactment of information literacy was agile and responsive to need at the moment of practice. The results indicate that everyday spaces provide opportunities to develop information literacy practices, which support informal learning. Findings of the study conclude that information literacy is played out in a series of digital, vernacular and visual enactments, which shape the information landscape.
Information Processing & Management, 2019
Refugee experience of resettlement into a third country is problematised by posing the question, what happens when an established information landscape fractures? Themes of disjuncture, intensification and liminality that have emerged from the author's research are described, using social theories as the analytical lens to shape the contours of fracture. Two other questions are posed How is digital space implicated in rebuilding information landscapes that have become fractured? and; What is the role of technology in enabling or constraining the conditions for remaking place? 1.2. Overview of studies The conception of fracture has emerged from an ongoing research program that focuses on understanding refugee experiences of resettlement into a third country from an information perspective. Data has been collected from several studies, each with a different focus, such as experiences of resettlement, health information, refugee youth and learning, Syrian resettlement experiences in Sweden, which the author and her colleagues have reported in the literature (i.e.
Journal of Information Science, 2016
Refugee youth are faced with complex information needs that require them to identify and map the everyday spaces that can contribute to their learning outside the formal schooling system. The use of everyday spaces by refugee youth aged 16–25 was investigated using photovoice and interview data collection methods. The findings of the study suggest that the information needs and information literacy practices of this cohort arise from the desire to connect with a new community, to learn new social rules and to become established, while at the same time supporting the information needs of other family members and dealing with the social challenges that arise from cultural expectations. These challenges require them to connect with a wide range of everyday spaces to support their learning needs.
European societies are diverse and multilingual due to fluxes of migration over centuries. Diversity and multilingualism are therefore part of the European identity. With the increased arrival since 2005 of refugees fleeing from conflicts in Syria and other countries, the portrayal of refugees, but also of migrants who have lived in European countries for a long time, is dominated by stereotypes and negative connotations. Migration-related issues have even become the core topic in national elections for right and far-right groups, often in complicity with boulevard media and assisted by the algorithmic logic of social media platforms. But even quality media cope only rarely with the needs of refugees and migrants and seldom try to make their voices heard. This study aims at identifying the needs of refugees and migrants in the domain of media communication and highlights existing and possible responses by community media. In the first part of the study Salvatore Scifo gives an overview of the concepts of community media as third media sector - beside public service and commercial media - and its definition and recognition by European institutions and UNESCO. Community media are defined as mostly local, independent not-for-profit media which provide access to training, production and distribution facilities. Community media appear mostly in form of community radio. The participatory approach to content production leads to the fact that they manage to include marginalised groups and contribute to community development, social inclusion and intercultural dialogue. In the second section Jonas Hassemer and Brigitta Busch analyses ethnographic interviews with refugees they conducted in 2017 in Austria. The aim of the interviews was to identify what role media in general and community media in particular play for (recently arrived) refugees and migrants in response to their particular needs and with regard to their human right to freedom of expression, which includes the right to information. Among the central needs expressed, they highlight the role of networks in general – virtual and face to face – as they afford social capital with regard to problem solving (administrative procedures, access to health care and social welfare, housing etc.). Local NGOs, social initiatives and cultural organisations equally play an important role as informal networks that contribute to the shared experiences of newcomers. Access to mainstream media, both as part of the audience and in terms of active participation, is often difficult for newcomers/refugees. As the group of people that is described by the term ‘refugee’ is by far not homogeneous, the barriers encountered are also diverse and are experienced in different ways. Among them are the prevailing monolingual orientation of mainstream media, the lack of meta- knowledge relevant to the local media landscape, and the scarcity of available roles as a result from dominant discourses that assign newcomers certain stereotypical roles while denying them acknowledgement as integral parts of the audience. These barriers could be overcome by specific projects or more permanent involvement with community media. Because of their open and flexible nature, they offer activities that help bridge language barriers, provide a less constrained space for alternative narratives and self- representation, and accord socially recognised positions for refugees and migrants, where their voices can be heard. As demonstrated in this study, community media can help getting access to knowledge, in particular for coping with the new environment, in establishing local networks and facilitating language learning. In the third section Nadia Bellardi opens an insight to a series of good practice examples across Europe on how refugees and migrants can get active in community media or have set up their own communicative structures to get a voice and to communicate with the broader society. These examples demonstrate how community media can meet the communicative needs of refugees and migrants by offering training, space for self-representation and offering points of entry to local networks. This bottom-up approach to content production leads in many cases to multilingual media that reflect to a very high extent the linguistic and cultural diversity of the society.
Syrian new Scots' information literacy way-finding practices: phase 1 research findings
2017
The research in Phase 1 was conducted via interviews with two Scottish Refugee Council Coordinators and two focus groups with Syrian new Scots (with nine women and nine men). Syrian participants were also involved in a drawing exercise that helped to map visually their information worlds. The main information needs expressed by participants revolved around the learning of the English language, travelling freely and gaining confidence to navigate around the city/town and reuniting with family members. There was a series of interesting findings related to the Syrian families' use of technology and a few new ideas around information provision.
It takes a community to build a framework: Information literacy within intercultural settings
Journal of Information Science, 2016
Information literacy practice plays a key role in the transitional processes of individuals within new intercultural settings. While this ability to adjust to new cultural contexts is increasingly important within today’s multicultural societies, campuses and workplaces, typical approaches to information literacy education struggle to scaffold the newcomer’s disrupted information landscapes. In focusing on prescriptive skills, information literacy standards position linguistic and cultural difference as a learning deficiency. Yet when alternative information literacy frameworks centre upon personal habits of mind, they fail to account for contextual dynamics. In this conceptual paper, the authors use research into the health practices of resettling refugees as an example to argue that a move away from behaviourist approaches to information literacy refocuses our attention on questions of adjustment and engagement with cultural understandings of information, and forms a more inclusiv...