Cognitive Authority as an Instance of Informational and Expert Power

The study elaborates the picture of the relationships between information and power by examining how informational and expert power appear in the characterizations of cognitive authority presented in the research literature. The study draws on the conceptual analysis of 25 key studies on the above issues. Mainly focusing on Patrick Wilson’s classic notion of cognitive authority, it was examined how informational power and expert power are constitutive of authority of this kind, and how people subject to the influence of cognitive authorities trust or challenge such authorities. The findings indicate that researchers have characterized the features of expert power inherent in cognitive authority by diverse qualifiers such as competence and trustworthiness of information sources considered authoritative. Informational power has mainly been approached in terms of irrefutability of individual arguments and facts offered by cognitive authorities. Both forms of power are persuasive in nature and information seekers can trust or challenge them by drawing on their experiential knowledge in particular. The findings also highlight the need to elaborate the construct of cognitive authority by rethinking its relevance in the networked information environments where the traditional picture of authoritative information sources is eroding.

“Let's keep this video as real as possible”: young video bloggers constructing cognitive authority through a health-related information creation process

PurposeThis study examines the information literacy practices of young video bloggers, focusing on the ways in which they construct their cognitive authority through a health-related information creation process.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws upon socially oriented information literacy research and nexus analysis as its methodological framework. Data, including YouTube videos, theme interviews and video diaries, were collected with three Finnish video bloggers and qualitatively analysed using nexus analytical concepts to describe the central elements of social action.FindingsThe study shows that video bloggers employ several information practices during the information creation process, including planning, information-seeking, organization, editing and presentation of information. They construct their cognitive authority in relation to their anticipated audience by grounding it on different types of information: experience-based, embodied and scientific. Trustworthiness, emphasized with authenticity and genuineness, and competence, based on experience, expertise and second-hand information, were recognized as key components of credibility in this context.Originality/valueThis study increases the understanding of the complex ways in which young people create information on social media and influence their audiences. The study contributes to information literacy research by offering insights into the under-researched area of information creation. It is among the few studies to examine cognitive authority construction in the information creation process. The notion of authority as constructed through trustworthiness and competence and grounded on different types of information, can be taken into account in practice by information professionals and educators when planning information literacy instruction.

International Organizations and the Architecture of Arguments in Global Social Governance

The concluding chapter resumes the arguments made in the introduction to this volume. It summarizes the empirical findings of the individual contributions and highlights prevailing cross-cutting issues and themes. It also depicts further and future avenues of research resulting from this volume. Overall, it becomes evident that International organizations (IOs) have been part of the architecture of arguments in global social governance for a long time. They have been populating diverse social fields in which they more often cooperate or coexist in issue-related or individual regional niches than contest each other. However, they often share a field with other actors, too. IOs have also proven strong in exercising soft governance as the broadcasters of new ideas. Thus, they have cognitive authority over their specific field. However, birth characteristics, such as membership rules or the design of decision-taking, as well as path-dependencies influence IO activities and discourses.

Economic discourse and visual configuration

Economic discourse has always used different visual modes of shaping perception. For example, characteristic classical image in economic discourse is the "invisible hand". In doing so, economic discourse reaches for, concerning of its metaphors, for resources in physics, but also in literature. If big part of the visual figures of economic discourse (equilibrium, e.g.) was borrowed from physics in the twentieth century, mathematics is a significant, even dominant source of the formation of visual perception, based on different schemes, graphs and geometric figures. In this paper, we show the configuration dynamics of visual perceptions in economic discourse, starting from the fact that visualization of economic discourse has the following functions: a) demonstration of certain knowledge, b) the realization of a performative visual effect, that is the creation of certain forms of visibility, c) persuasion of the public regarding the fact that economic discourse has cognitive authority.

Cognitive Authority and the Constraint of Attitude Change in Groups

Are individuals’ attitudes constrained such that it is difficult to change one attitude without also changing other attitudes? Given a lack of longitudinal studies in real-world settings, it remains unclear if individuals have coherent attitude systems at all—and, if they do, what produces attitude constraint. I argue and show that groups can endogenously produce attitude constraint via cognitive authorities. Within groups, cognitive authorities explicitly link attitudes and generate feelings of connectedness among members, thereby facilitating the interpersonal processing of attitudes. Using data on interpersonal sentiment relations and attitude changes among members of intentional communities, I find cognitive authorities constrain attitudes via two mechanisms: (1) interpersonal tensions when attitudes and sentiment relations are misaligned (i.e., balance dynamics), and (2) social influence processes leading to attitude changes that are concordant with the group’s attitude system (i.e., constraint satisfaction). These findings imply that attitude change models based exclusively on interpersonal contagion or individual drives for cognitive consistency overlook important ways group structures affect how individuals feel and think.

Wilson and Kierkegaard: Understanding Cognitive Authority

Different conceptions of cognitive authority in library and information science (LIS) obscure best practice for functions of the profession, such as information literacy instruction, that derive from how authority is understood. Some of these conceptions, such as a normative conception of authority, are prominent but not grounded in theory. Accordingly, this paper examines the work of Wilson (1983) and Kierkegaard (1813-1855) in hopes of reminding the profession of its most rigorously articulated formulations of authority. A more critical understanding of this concept is necessary for practice that speaks to the reality of a context bifurcated by adherence to competing authorities. Différentes conceptions de l'autorité cognitive en bibliothéconomie et sciences de l'information (LIS) obscurcissent la pratique des différentes fonctions de la profession, comme l'enseignement de la maîtrise de l'information, qui découlent de la façon dont l'autorité est comprise. Certaines de ces conceptions, comme la conception normative de l'autorité, sont importantes sans être fondées sur la théorie. En conséquence, cet article examine les travaux de Wilson (1983) et Kierkegaard (1813-1855) dans l'espoir de rappeler à la profession les conceptions de l'autorité les plus rigoureusement articulées. Une compréhension plus critique de ce concept est nécessaire pour une pratique tenant compte de la réalité des contextes tout en considérant les autorités concurrentes.

Understanding fake news during the Covid-19 health crisis from the perspective of information behaviour: The case of Spain

The health crisis brought about by Covid-19 has generated a heightened need for information as a response to a situation of uncertainty and high emotional load, in which fake news and other informative content have grown dramatically. The aim of this work is to delve into the understanding of fake news from the perspective of information behaviour by analysing a sample of fake news items that were spread in Spain during the Covid-19 health crisis. A sample of 242 fake news items was collected from the Maldita.es website and analysed according to the criteria of cognitive and affective authority, interactivity, themes and potential danger. The results point to a practical absence of indicators of cognitive authority (53.7%), while the affective authority of these news items is built through mechanisms of discrediting people, ideas or movements (40.7%) and, secondarily, the use of offensive or coarse language (17.7%) and comparison or reference to additional information sources (26.6%). Interactivity features allow commenting in 24.3% of the cases. The dominant theme is society (43.1%), followed by politics (26.4%) and science (23.6%). Finally, fake news, for the most part, does not seem to pose any danger to the health or safety of people – the harm it causes is intangible and moral. The author concludes by highlighting the importance of a culture of civic values to combat fake news.

Data (il)literacy education as a hidden curriculum of the datafication of education

This position paper uses the concept of “hidden curriculum” as a heuristic device to analyze everyday data-related practices in formal education. Grounded in a careful reading of the theoretical literature, this paper argues that the everyday data-related practices of contemporary education can be approached as functional forms of data literacy education: deeds with unintentional educational consequences for students’ relationships with data and datafication. More precisely, this paper suggests that everyday data-related practices represent data as cognitive authority and naturalize the routines of all-pervading data collection. These routines lead to what is here referred to as “data (il)literacy”—an uncritical, one-dimensional understanding of data and datafication. Since functional data (il)literacy education takes place subconsciously, it can be conceptualized as a form of hidden curriculum, an idea that refers to lessons taught and learned but not consciously intended to be so.

Becoming and belonging in interdisciplinary PhD research

PhD research has been depicted as a process of belonging and becoming. Through information-related activities, such as looking for, finding, avoiding or citing literature, PhD-students connect with people and texts that possess cognitive authority within their discipline or domain. It is assumed that supervisors in the discipline are the most important figures as regards the modelling of PhD-students scholarly identities. For instance, a widely cited textbook on doctoral writing states that “PhD students’ writing is shaped by discipline-specific conventions and protocols; by conversations with advisors who literally embody the discipline” (Kamler and Thomson, 2008, p. 508, cited in Gullbekk & Byström, 2019, p.20). The role of the library and the librarians may well be to facilitate discipline or domain specific information-related activities. In interdisciplinary environments however, PhD-students may experience a process of becoming without belonging and the domain-based cognitive authority of texts and authors may be negotiable. In this round-table, we will explore the role of the library in interdisciplinary PhD-research. First, we will familiarize ourselves with select views on interdisciplinarity and reflect on variations among the roundtable-participants’ interdisciplinary experiences. Second, and more importantly, we will discuss complexities that occur in scholarly communication in a multi-disciplinary research environment where the students write article-based dissertations. We will explore the role of supervisors, librarians included, in a particular case where students must draw on multiple fields or disciplines, where questions of the cognitive authority of texts and of PhD-students’ belonging emerge as somewhat contested. The case discussed in the round table is based on fieldwork conducted in an interdisciplinary department at a Scandinavian University. Participants may familiarize themselves with the case by reading the article Becoming a scholar by publication – PhD students citing in interdisciplinary argumentation (Gullbekk & Byström, 2019).