Responding To The Post-truth Phenomenon

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionariesdeclared that their Word Of The Year was to be "post-truth", which they defined as:

“有关或表示情况下objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief"

This decision reflects the way in which the concept ofpost-truthhas quickly become a widely-acknowledged phenomenon and a mainstream concern. It should be of particular concern to those, such as librarians, with a professional interest in the provision of access to accurate information.

The natural response to this issue is to press for a greater awareness of and education ininformation literacy, and this is certainly an important consideration. However, a wider range of technical and practical issues in knowledge organisation and information management can also be brought to bear on this.

Much of the attention and effort from the DCMI community over the last two decades has been concerned with the development of technologies and practices to use metadata to improve the precision and accuracy of information.

How should the metadata community respond to the rise of thepost-truthphenomenon? Does metadata have a part to play in helping people to identify objectively accurate information?

The DCMI community ought to have a view on this and so, in order to help us develop this, we are pleased to announce thatDavid Clarkewill present and moderate a plenary session,Developing a Metadata Community Response to the Post-Truth Information Ageat the DCMI 2017 conference, where delegates will have the chance to explore and discuss this issue in depth.

It is not too late toregister for DCMI 2017!