policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
So there’s no causality there. It’s a very
complicated social, intellectual, personal
and political environment that is being
‘unmanaged’ by ‘unleaders’. There’s a lack
of leadership.
What solution does your book propose?
the Australian prime ministership, and the
complexity of Macron in France and Justin
Trudeau in Canada.
So what we have is a complicated series
of discussions whereby, in the old days, the
argument used to be that people would
simply act in their own best self-interest. But
these days, of course, that’s not occurring.
What Brexit and Trump show are that
the very people who do not gain from
a Brexit, the very people who actually
lose from a Trump in the presidency,
are the people who voted for these
things. And that’s because particular dog
whistles and particular levers were pulled
in the discussion: racism, xenophobia,
immigration, border walls and so forth.
Therefore, when you create an enemy
within that is not an enemy, you are
blocking, deflecting, masking a discussion
of many of the real and important events,
which are about the economy, the
political economy, social justice and the
redistribution of wealth.
We’re not having these conversations.
Instead, we’re talking about a wall, or
we’re talking about subsidies for Cornish
cream, so we’re picking very minor issues
and rendering them very large.
The solution is education. The
characteristic of the people who voted
for Donald Trump is that they were the
least educated members of the US. The
people who voted for Brexit, similarly,
were in some of the poorest areas of the
UK, and also many were men and women
who didn’t have the opportunity of a
university education.
So, it is actually a conversation about
education, about ensuring that citizens
have media literacy and information literacy,
and therefore aren’t taking composite news,
press releases and tweets as facts, and that
they actually have the context, intellectual
experience and expertise to seek out
information and interpret it.
I don’t use the phrase ‘fake news’. I think
it’s used once in the book in inverted
commas. What I’m interested in is citizens
having a diverse range of information
sources and ideas, and having the
information literacy to be able to make
up their minds.
But we live in an age now where reading
is optional. My former books, The University
of Google and Digital Dieting, to name just
a couple, are about this and make the case
very clearly. We live in an age of ignorance.
We live in an era of fear, and that’s simply
because people are not getting beyond
themselves. We live in intensely selfish
times, Instagram times. We assess who
we are by our capacity to get likes on
Facebook, and loves on Instagram. Well,
how about you read something rather than
take another picture of yourself?
In practical terms, how do you propose that
this education take place?
Teach information and media literacy in
schools, and teach information and media
literacy in universities. It was my great
privilege when I was teaching in the UK
at the University of Brighton, that I was
involved in implementing information
literacy programs throughout the university,
including in the Brighton and Sussex
Medical School for first-year medical
students. And I think that’s quite important,
because patients are coming to surgeries in
the UK and Australia and elsewhere having
put something into Dr Google and hoping
for the best. So we can pretend that Google
doesn’t exist, or we can actually enable
our medical students, who then become
medical graduates and then doctors, to
have those information literacy skills, to
understand what their patients are finding,
and enabling their patients to have higher
levels of information literacy.
So without a doubt in my mind, what
we need to be focusing on is enhancing,
improving and lifting the standards that
we expect at schools, the standards that
we expect at universities. We need to be
increasing the amount of reading we all do,
from students to citizens, and demanding
more of all of us as citizens. If you breathe,
you have rights, but if you breathe, you
also have a responsibility to read, think
and understand what’s happening in the
world beyond.
Because this becomes a political issue, are
you expecting any pushback?
I’m not bothered about pushback at all.
My late husband and I are old political
operatives, so I’m not remotely bothered
or concerned about what people on the
extreme right or the religious right might
have to say about me or anybody else.
I’m not terribly bothered at all about what
anybody says on Twitter.
The advantage of being a scholar who’s
worked in nine universities in four countries
is that anything I could have seen, I have
We live in intensely selfish
times, Instagram times ... Well,
how about you read something
rather than take another picture
of yourself?
seen. Anything that could have been said
has been said.
So, with the greatest respect, the whole
point of being an academic is debate,
discussion and taking alternative views.
And what I’m interested in, and what I’m
committed to, is reading, thinking and
writing. And I read a great deal. I write a
great deal. My 20th book is about to be
published, so I’m not mucking about here.
I’m very comfortable with pushback. I’m
very comfortable with discourse, dialogue
and debate. I’m sure a lot of it will be coated
in sexism, as we see so frequently on the
planet at the moment. And so, as I always
say, just bring it. ■
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