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This chapter explores responsibility in the posttruth era in communication disciplines while documenting the civic and political ramifications of the current news climate in the United States.

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is in a critical moment in its information and news ecology, exhibiting signs of pretruth and posttruth syndromes. Between the “pretruth” and “posttruth” there is a gap that circumvented “truth.” The state of information in the MENA region brings back the dystopian Orwellian notion of the “Ministry of Truth.” A poetic term in anticipation of this moment of the crisis of truth. Sharing the latter with the rest of the world, the pretruth moment is engraved in the region's history of precarious political and religious authoritarian control and manipulation of information and news and low press freedom. In the region, truth is told, hidden, distorted, and manufactured by a blend of humans and bots, where both artificial intelligence and social humans are involved in this process of multipolarized disinformation operations with multifarious sponsors, actors, and beneficiaries that have distinct and often clashing agendas and interests. To understand the ecology of truth, facts, news, and information in the Middle East, studies ought to be situated within the ecosystem of information and media technologies in the globalized national and transnational societies of the region and consider both the role of the regionally oriented neoauthoritarian regimes and that of interested rising and established global powers. Central to this ecosystem is the dynamic interaction among three actors: communication technologies (the focus here is on the Internet); media, public, and activists' use of these technologies to mobilize, inform, and present alternative narratives, and to resist or confirm state narratives; and the authoritarian political regimes and their containment strategies for legacy media (particularly television) and the Internet.

While LIS scholarship emphasizes the need to be multi-literate by equipping people with critical information literacy, digital literacy, and media literacy skills to combat the phenomenon of fake news in the contemporary information society, the concept of political information literacy is still in its infancy. This chapter addresses this gap by developing an understanding of political information literacy and challenges the premise that information professionals and information organizations should remain neutral in the face of phenomena like censorship through noise and disinformation. In this endeavor, it reviews contemporary information environments vis-à-vis the growth of fake news and misinformation, and current information literacy approaches utilized by information organizations. Thereafter, it explores several cognitive barriers, such as the role of confirmation bias, information avoidance, information groupishness, and information overload, which affects people’s ability to process information. Finally, it encourages information professionals to hold regular information sessions on politically charged topics, tackle the cognitive factors increasing misinformation, and cultivate multidisciplinary approaches to confront fake news.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This chapter explores “politic talks” (also known as political information) on the websites of academic libraries in land-grant state universities of the South in the context of a global retreat of democracy that emerged during former President Trump’s regime as the 45th President of the United States. The exploratory qualitative evaluation applies website content analysis of seven information offerings in three categories that include: (1) information sources (collections, resources), information policy and planning (assigned role, strategic representation), and connections (internal, external, news and events). Promising practices and illustrative examples of “politic talks” representation on academic library websites show how they are serving as significant providers of political information during current politically turbulent times. The discussion of these findings in relation to each state’s voting likelihood based on trends since 2000 has significant political implications in enhancing the role of academic libraries moving forward.

This chapter aims at contributing to the promotion of education for competent and responsible citizenship with regard to the European Dimension. It takes into consideration five points: (1) the expected profile of the active European citizen in a reliable European cooperation project; (2) the attitude of people in Europe to the European Union (EU) and to the other member countries, according to Eurobarometer and other surveys, keeping in mind the international scenario, and the internal cooperation among the EU states; (3) the situation of citizenship education, as reported by European and international studies as Eurydice (2017); (4) suitable innovative and technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning excellence, aiming at Education of Responsible Competent European Citizenship, including digital citizenship, focusing on knowledge, skills, attitudes, values of responsible citizenship in a democratic society, and developing thinking processes: information management, judgment and decision-making processes, working constantly under European point of view, strengthening contacts, and exchanges among EU member countries; and (5) non-formal and informal learning, influences from the family, the social environment and the mass media on the attitude of people in Europe to the European cooperation. Proposals are developed for improvement in the field of teaching/learning, teacher training, and communication, fostering interaction, engagement, and competent citizenship for the common future.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.

The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to conduct a critical literature review that examines the origins and development of research on service robots in organizations, as well as the key emotional and cognitive issues between service employees, customers, and robots. This review provides a foundation for future research that leverages the emotional connection between service robots and humans.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A critical literature review that examines robotics, artificial intelligence, emotions, approach/avoid behavior, and cognitive biases is conducted.

Findings – This research provides six key themes that emerge from the current state of research in the field of service robotics with 14 accompanying research questions forming the basis of a research agenda. The themes presented are as follows: Theme 1: Employees have a forgotten “dual role”; Theme 2: The influence of groups is neglected; Theme 3: Opposing emotions lead to uncertain outcomes; Theme 4: We know how robots influence engagement, but not experience; Theme 5: Trust is necessary but poorly understood; and Theme 6: Bias is contagious: if the human mind is irrational…so too are robot minds.

Practical Implications – Practically, this research provides guidance for researchers and practitioners alike regarding the current state of research, gaps, and future directions. Importantly for practitioners, it sheds light on themes in the use of AI and robotics in services, highlighting opportunities to consider the dual role of the employee, examines how incorporating a service robot influences all levels of the organization, addresses motivational conflicts for employees and customers, explores how service robots influence the whole customer experience and how trust is formed, and how we are (often inadvertently) creating biased robots.