The article on information privilege was a great read and extremely informative. I never knew how big of a problem information privilege was before reading this article. I love how the author helped break down information privilege through their own experience when speaking about how one of their friend’s friend was able to publish content on fermentation through an alternative route that saved him thousands of dollars than if he had taken the traditional path. This showed the author that they were underprivileged when it came to that information as they did not know about the alternative route before they heard about his way of doing it. I loved how the author conveyed information privilege as a pedagogy and showed how it connected with other pedagogies like feminine and critical pedagogies, which would also challenge the social and structural systems in place that allow certain people to have different privileges over others. Also, I loved how the author defined feminine and critical pedagogies. The author showed how critical and feminine ideologies come into play in learning spaces by challenging the cognitive and behaviorist ways of teaching. I also learned that critical pedagogies would make us think critically about one’s power and privilege. While, feminine pedagogies would make us challenge the status quo and challenge the systems in place. I was not familiar with either pedagogies before reading this article, and it was fascinating to see how they would relate to information privilege. In the section of “scaling the paywall,” I found it extremely interesting how the author explained how they would teach a research-based class by assigning readings that would explain critical, feminine, and progressive theories where the students would question their privilege. Then, they would be taught about how large the library’s budget is and how finding those same materials on the internet are not as easy as advertised. That showed the students the information privilege they had compared to other students who were not in the class. This case study also helped me understand information privilege better. I have always believed that one would not be able to learn everything on the internet as some advertise. However, I did not fully understand the discrepancy in knowledge before reading this article. Although my project does not focus on information privilege, this article was extremely informative about the issue. It helped me understand the concept much better and helped me see how serious the problem is today.
