Thank you for this very thoughtful article--I agree that librarians should become much more curious about current alternative media and information sources in the interest of viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom.
I won't say more about the #Twitter Files or Matt Taibbi here (I've done that before in this space :-) ).
I'd also like to see librarians be more curious about:
--the current misinformation/disinformation conundrum we're dealing with, and the politicized discussions of both, and how better thinking from philosophy and psychology might help the field discuss these more effectively
--alternatives for credible news gathering (trusting news sources)
--interventions to reduce polarization and the research underpinning them--the Stanford Depolarization experiments)
--Various civil society initiatives where librarians can align in a nonpartisan way
Many librarians seem to believe that they are protecting us from mis/dis-information by excluding independent sources on Substack etc. These types of sources are explicitly maligned as unreliable and biased, as opposed to the certifiably reliable and unbiased traditional sources promoted by the likes of NewsGuard. This sort of librarianship embraces their own perceived moral superiority in order to determine the bad information that they must protect the public against, lest the public do their own research and reach the wrong conclusions.
The findings of the Twitter Files cannot be accepted as valid because they undermine this version of reality.
Libraries and the academy worked hard during the pandemic to oust anyone who spoke or acted contrary to the approved ideologies. The old values and norms of neutrality, which substantiated historical collection building, such as the Labadie collection, do not extend to today's milieu. Institutions such as U-M rejected independent thought and action in order to embrace the imperatives of the Covidian order and the attendant diversity regime.
The information literacy programs and collections at places like U-M do in fact pay lip service to social media and blogs etc because they are too big to be ignored. However, the overriding desire to curate and lead students and researchers to the "right" information is what negates the appetite to pay attention to the Twitter Files and other related independent media.
Thank you for making these arguments: in broad strokes I quite agree and the problem has a long history: consider how researchers studying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were restricted for years to publishing their work in alternative venues because their theories were dismissed outright by mainstream news outlets. I do have a couple of issues with the article though: to make the assertion that librarians are "current[ly] apath[etic] or silen[t] on digital platform discoverability" you cite sources from 2002 and 2009; it would be good to see something more recent. As well, you do make the case that major media dismissed the Twitter Files story, but you didn't really make explicit how the controversty has been discussed in the LIS literature, which would have strengthened the argument.
Yes, that is a problem. Perhaps you could have included documentation of your efforts to make this determination as regards LIS, re: databases searched, terms used, etc.?
it is a complicated tale of trying to work within the constraints of Wikipedia. The actual "Twitter Files"--the series MT did between December 2, 2022 and March 9, 2023 reprinted as an appendix to our article,𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲:𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 w𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. (link: https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter).
However, getting an article about the "Twitter Files" in Wikipedia was almost a cage match. I work in Wikipedia some (articles about libraries, mostly) and I made what I thought was a beautiful chronological table of all of the Twitter Files. It was deleted because I was told by the Wikipedia editors that Wikipedia won't allow a link to anything in Substack. Also the entire article was set for deletion. There were a few of us who felt otherwise and fought to have the page. It was allowed to stay.(it is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files ) However, many bad faith editors have framed the story incorrectly, I think. AS the "Twitter Files" story grew the only actual link in it to the "Twitter Files" article in Wikipedia is at the very bottom of the article. Treatment of the "Twitter Files" is a case study in how real information can be suppressed in Wikipedia. If you are really interested you can read the history of the editing of the Twitter Files on the "Twitter Files" Wikipedia page history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twitter_Files&action=history&dir=prev
All this is one example of how information can be suppressed. I know this is a long explanation.
When I try to explain this I feel like I am so boring. But when I began to edit Wikipedia I was adding facts about libraries and library history. That went well for years. No one ever deleted my contributions. But when I tried to contribute to an article on "Twitter Files"--it was like they unleashed the Kraken.
I think it all comes down to Trump and the deep state. Avoid letting Trump be right at any cost and never admit a deep state exists (because that brings us back to Trump being right. 😂).
You are right. when I do database searches which I used to believe in, I think now that they retrieve a very small percent of relevant topics. And SE as you demonstrate are not reliable as also behind scenes messing with the searches. THESE are, I wish, what librarians need to solve or address.
This is such an important article. I would love to see a collaboration between Substack and a major library system—seems like it could be beneficial for both the platform and the library.
The information explosion had as an effect the reduction of barriers to entry to publication. I remember enjoying the fact that there were many more funny people to be found through the Internet than could be found in paper publications. Ditto with news. I grew up in a newspaper family and we were all news junkies. With digital media there were many more sources for news and for opinion than newspapers. Twitter/X as a source of news grew as traditional news media especially—lamentably newspapers—have been dying.
The new sources came faster than they could be organized. The amount of information available has stretched beyond discoverability to use your term. Your discussion of this fact is chastening. Particularly for an audience of librarians.
A problem we have that this article highlights is something I have felt for a long time: there is not a critical mass of librarians with the kinds of skills necessary to do the work required to catch up with organizing the kinds of sources of information this article examines.
Thank you for the citations and the Appendix. There is a lot here. I particularly liked the discussions of Substack but I am not done with that part of the article.
Characterizing new media platforms as the new samizdat is an intriguing analogy. However, unlike the classic Russian samizdat, which was written by a class of dissident intellectuals for a particular like-minded readership, the new media samizdat is much more diverse in authorship and readership, varying widely in political viewpoint, prose quality, rhetorical acumen, and even level of reality-based knowledge. Substack may be a good example of a better, more reliable communication channel, but others, like Medium, seem to me to be much more variable in tone and typology. It might be worthwhile having a librarian-brokered survey of these new platforms that examines the scope and reliability of each.
Very interesting. TBH, I am a librarian who reads more Substack than trad journalism or academic papers these days. But it never occurred to me to try to get Substack indexed in libraries.
I guess my thinking was "I don't need a library to find Substack articles if I have Google " But it is not always free ... I wonder if it would make sense to set up some kind of library subscription option for paid Substacks like we have for academic journals.
Excellent point - library subscriptions of Substack and I wish libraries would do that, but unsure if that'll happen though. Last year I was pretty upset by what I felt was a lack of understanding about Substack by some of the librarians on ALA Connect. That's why I created LibStack, the directory of librarians that's cited in this article's References. Thanks, Kathleen!
There's a kind of structural incuriosity in the profession shaped by disciplinary norms such as gatekeeping and authority, skepticism towards non peer-reviewed writing, and limited understanding of the history of printing and books (e.g. self-publishing, blogging, are still perceived as self promotion). [Full disclosure: I used to be an open access champion but now I write a weekly paid Substack. A generous amount of my content is free every week, but there is a paywall because I've finally recognized what Zurkowski explained in his proposal for information literacy - not all information should be made available for free.]
Thank you for bringing this up. The lack of institutional subscriber options to digital content is part of the problem. I don't think it's quite accurate to place so much blame on librarians when providers have clearly not considered models that include them.
Good article. I usually get two reactions when I mention an article from Substack. It's either "What's substack?" or they allude to the fact that it's right wing. 🙄.
Back in Dec of '22 I had emailed the Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle on why, as the paper of record, they did not cover the Twitter Files. (I live in SF and receive the chronicle daily) I accused the MSM of taking a vow of silence. This was his response to me. Lame.
Hi, Maura. Thanks for writing. Sorry but I have to push back a bit against your email. There was no “censorship” on our part. Quite the opposite. We pursued the one local angle of the story that we could verify and published it quickly. It is here.
We did that despite the fact that Twitter chose to leak the documents to only one reporter. We have asked for the documents so we can review them ourselves but so far have been unsuccessful. When/if we get the documents we will review them to see what else we can write."
I appreciated this article, but thought that its framing could have been optimized. The Twitter files were merely an example, albeit a great one. I thought your lede was "A central issue and theme of this paper is that very little of this torrent of information on digital platforms is visible to academic researchers, librarians, and those to whom they provide information."
It would have been great to expand on the need to collect alternative media, because the current media landscape is highly curated (a polite word for censored). Having library systems subscribe to a variety of Substacks would make writers like Matt Taibbi accessible to the public (he's paywalled) as well as help the economics of alternativeland.
BTW, "reliable sources" are those that maintain the party line--i.e., the dominant narrative. Wikipedia captures everything wrong about today's highly biased media landscape. On politics, it is the place to go to get the CIA perspective-of-the-moment... It's widely rumored they run it.
You are right. We didn't give any solutions. First wanted to lay out the problem. The same entrepreneurs that create library data bases like Ebsco might consider this. Since this Substack is free maybe they will monitor it and get ideas. You give us some good ideas, here.
Thank you for this very thoughtful article--I agree that librarians should become much more curious about current alternative media and information sources in the interest of viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom.
I won't say more about the #Twitter Files or Matt Taibbi here (I've done that before in this space :-) ).
I'd also like to see librarians be more curious about:
--the current misinformation/disinformation conundrum we're dealing with, and the politicized discussions of both, and how better thinking from philosophy and psychology might help the field discuss these more effectively
--alternatives for credible news gathering (trusting news sources)
--interventions to reduce polarization and the research underpinning them--the Stanford Depolarization experiments)
--Various civil society initiatives where librarians can align in a nonpartisan way
--Alternative models to improve scientific credibility (Open Science Framework, Adversarial Collaborations)
Thanks again for this article!
Many librarians seem to believe that they are protecting us from mis/dis-information by excluding independent sources on Substack etc. These types of sources are explicitly maligned as unreliable and biased, as opposed to the certifiably reliable and unbiased traditional sources promoted by the likes of NewsGuard. This sort of librarianship embraces their own perceived moral superiority in order to determine the bad information that they must protect the public against, lest the public do their own research and reach the wrong conclusions.
The findings of the Twitter Files cannot be accepted as valid because they undermine this version of reality.
Libraries and the academy worked hard during the pandemic to oust anyone who spoke or acted contrary to the approved ideologies. The old values and norms of neutrality, which substantiated historical collection building, such as the Labadie collection, do not extend to today's milieu. Institutions such as U-M rejected independent thought and action in order to embrace the imperatives of the Covidian order and the attendant diversity regime.
The information literacy programs and collections at places like U-M do in fact pay lip service to social media and blogs etc because they are too big to be ignored. However, the overriding desire to curate and lead students and researchers to the "right" information is what negates the appetite to pay attention to the Twitter Files and other related independent media.
Thank you for making these arguments: in broad strokes I quite agree and the problem has a long history: consider how researchers studying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were restricted for years to publishing their work in alternative venues because their theories were dismissed outright by mainstream news outlets. I do have a couple of issues with the article though: to make the assertion that librarians are "current[ly] apath[etic] or silen[t] on digital platform discoverability" you cite sources from 2002 and 2009; it would be good to see something more recent. As well, you do make the case that major media dismissed the Twitter Files story, but you didn't really make explicit how the controversty has been discussed in the LIS literature, which would have strengthened the argument.
The Twitter Files have not been discussed in the LIS literature. Or the media literature. I wish they had been. Why haven't they been?
Yes, that is a problem. Perhaps you could have included documentation of your efforts to make this determination as regards LIS, re: databases searched, terms used, etc.?
I can do that but we did search LIS databases and media databases and worldCat there was nothing. Early on there was dismissal. Then silence.
Thank you for covering this very important topic!
From a comment thread on an earlier piece I was heartened to learn that students do use these alternative sources in their research papers.
I think there is some recognition but they can’t be used in Wikipedia. We found very few articles that recognized Substack as a reliable source.
Interesting!
Maybe that's because Katherine Maher was CEO of Wikipedia thru '21. The same CEO now at NPR trying to convince us all that NPR is not bias. LOL.
it is a complicated tale of trying to work within the constraints of Wikipedia. The actual "Twitter Files"--the series MT did between December 2, 2022 and March 9, 2023 reprinted as an appendix to our article,𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲:𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 w𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. (link: https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter).
However, getting an article about the "Twitter Files" in Wikipedia was almost a cage match. I work in Wikipedia some (articles about libraries, mostly) and I made what I thought was a beautiful chronological table of all of the Twitter Files. It was deleted because I was told by the Wikipedia editors that Wikipedia won't allow a link to anything in Substack. Also the entire article was set for deletion. There were a few of us who felt otherwise and fought to have the page. It was allowed to stay.(it is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files ) However, many bad faith editors have framed the story incorrectly, I think. AS the "Twitter Files" story grew the only actual link in it to the "Twitter Files" article in Wikipedia is at the very bottom of the article. Treatment of the "Twitter Files" is a case study in how real information can be suppressed in Wikipedia. If you are really interested you can read the history of the editing of the Twitter Files on the "Twitter Files" Wikipedia page history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twitter_Files&action=history&dir=prev
All this is one example of how information can be suppressed. I know this is a long explanation.
Thank you for the links
When I try to explain this I feel like I am so boring. But when I began to edit Wikipedia I was adding facts about libraries and library history. That went well for years. No one ever deleted my contributions. But when I tried to contribute to an article on "Twitter Files"--it was like they unleashed the Kraken.
I think it all comes down to Trump and the deep state. Avoid letting Trump be right at any cost and never admit a deep state exists (because that brings us back to Trump being right. 😂).
Excellent article. But libraries also need to find a way to search independent of Google because of issues like this:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/google-censors-are-still-waging-the
You are right. when I do database searches which I used to believe in, I think now that they retrieve a very small percent of relevant topics. And SE as you demonstrate are not reliable as also behind scenes messing with the searches. THESE are, I wish, what librarians need to solve or address.
This is such an important article. I would love to see a collaboration between Substack and a major library system—seems like it could be beneficial for both the platform and the library.
Thank you both for this analysis.
The information explosion had as an effect the reduction of barriers to entry to publication. I remember enjoying the fact that there were many more funny people to be found through the Internet than could be found in paper publications. Ditto with news. I grew up in a newspaper family and we were all news junkies. With digital media there were many more sources for news and for opinion than newspapers. Twitter/X as a source of news grew as traditional news media especially—lamentably newspapers—have been dying.
The new sources came faster than they could be organized. The amount of information available has stretched beyond discoverability to use your term. Your discussion of this fact is chastening. Particularly for an audience of librarians.
A problem we have that this article highlights is something I have felt for a long time: there is not a critical mass of librarians with the kinds of skills necessary to do the work required to catch up with organizing the kinds of sources of information this article examines.
Thank you for the citations and the Appendix. There is a lot here. I particularly liked the discussions of Substack but I am not done with that part of the article.
Bob Molyneux
Characterizing new media platforms as the new samizdat is an intriguing analogy. However, unlike the classic Russian samizdat, which was written by a class of dissident intellectuals for a particular like-minded readership, the new media samizdat is much more diverse in authorship and readership, varying widely in political viewpoint, prose quality, rhetorical acumen, and even level of reality-based knowledge. Substack may be a good example of a better, more reliable communication channel, but others, like Medium, seem to me to be much more variable in tone and typology. It might be worthwhile having a librarian-brokered survey of these new platforms that examines the scope and reliability of each.
Very interesting. TBH, I am a librarian who reads more Substack than trad journalism or academic papers these days. But it never occurred to me to try to get Substack indexed in libraries.
I guess my thinking was "I don't need a library to find Substack articles if I have Google " But it is not always free ... I wonder if it would make sense to set up some kind of library subscription option for paid Substacks like we have for academic journals.
Excellent point - library subscriptions of Substack and I wish libraries would do that, but unsure if that'll happen though. Last year I was pretty upset by what I felt was a lack of understanding about Substack by some of the librarians on ALA Connect. That's why I created LibStack, the directory of librarians that's cited in this article's References. Thanks, Kathleen!
There's a kind of structural incuriosity in the profession shaped by disciplinary norms such as gatekeeping and authority, skepticism towards non peer-reviewed writing, and limited understanding of the history of printing and books (e.g. self-publishing, blogging, are still perceived as self promotion). [Full disclosure: I used to be an open access champion but now I write a weekly paid Substack. A generous amount of my content is free every week, but there is a paywall because I've finally recognized what Zurkowski explained in his proposal for information literacy - not all information should be made available for free.]
Thank you for bringing this up. The lack of institutional subscriber options to digital content is part of the problem. I don't think it's quite accurate to place so much blame on librarians when providers have clearly not considered models that include them.
Good article. I usually get two reactions when I mention an article from Substack. It's either "What's substack?" or they allude to the fact that it's right wing. 🙄.
Should show them the Newsweek article! Fung, Katherine (March 4, 2025). “Why Is Everyone Suddenly on Substack?” Newsweek.
Back in Dec of '22 I had emailed the Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle on why, as the paper of record, they did not cover the Twitter Files. (I live in SF and receive the chronicle daily) I accused the MSM of taking a vow of silence. This was his response to me. Lame.
"Dec 5, 2022 12:33 PM, "Garcia-Ruiz, Emilio" <emilio.garcia-ruiz@sfchronicle.com> wrote:
Hi, Maura. Thanks for writing. Sorry but I have to push back a bit against your email. There was no “censorship” on our part. Quite the opposite. We pursued the one local angle of the story that we could verify and published it quickly. It is here.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rep-Ro-Khanna-pushed-back-on-Twitter-supression-17629897.php
We did that despite the fact that Twitter chose to leak the documents to only one reporter. We have asked for the documents so we can review them ourselves but so far have been unsuccessful. When/if we get the documents we will review them to see what else we can write."
That's a non-answer. The Twitter Files were explicated in depth but at Twitter. All they had to do was look. Thanks for trying!
Thank you!
I appreciated this article, but thought that its framing could have been optimized. The Twitter files were merely an example, albeit a great one. I thought your lede was "A central issue and theme of this paper is that very little of this torrent of information on digital platforms is visible to academic researchers, librarians, and those to whom they provide information."
It would have been great to expand on the need to collect alternative media, because the current media landscape is highly curated (a polite word for censored). Having library systems subscribe to a variety of Substacks would make writers like Matt Taibbi accessible to the public (he's paywalled) as well as help the economics of alternativeland.
BTW, "reliable sources" are those that maintain the party line--i.e., the dominant narrative. Wikipedia captures everything wrong about today's highly biased media landscape. On politics, it is the place to go to get the CIA perspective-of-the-moment... It's widely rumored they run it.
You are right. We didn't give any solutions. First wanted to lay out the problem. The same entrepreneurs that create library data bases like Ebsco might consider this. Since this Substack is free maybe they will monitor it and get ideas. You give us some good ideas, here.
Killed it..! new fan here!