Citation for the article:Andersen, Jack. “The Public Sphere and Discursive Activities: Information Literacy as Sociopolitical Skills.” Journal of Documentation 62.2 (2006): 213-228.Read via ABI/InformThe article provides a theoretical look at the concept of information literacy, drawing on the work of Habermas as well as looking at some composition scholars like Bizzell. What I found myself thinking about as I read it is how some of the ideas of public space might be applicable to social software and the spaces created in such online settings.Some notes from the article:”We cannot proceed and claiming to be devising information literacy frameworks if we do not have adequate analytical understandings of information literacy. Analytical understandings provide the means to reflection and seeing and interpreting information literacy issues in light of cultural, historical, political, and social perspectives” (215).Standards only go so far: “Becoming an information literate person is not a matter of following a standard or to be evaluated by one but to be able to discursively act upon a society configured and mediated by discourse” (215). It’s not just the basic outline of knowing you have an information need, knowing how to set up the search, finding the right tool and using it, and then evaluating the information and using it ethically. You have to be able to use your information literacy skills to participate broadly in society and its discussions. This is something that is sorely missing these days.Definition of genre knowledge: “. . .knowledge about how to communicate strategically within a discourse community. That is, what the norms are concerning vocabulary, writing style, epistemology, ideology, text composition, etc., and what legitimize these norms” (218). This is leading to application of information literacy. Made sense to me. …

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