Feedback Loops: Algorithmic Authority, Emergent Biases, and Implications for Information Literacy

Algorithms have become increasingly ubiquitous in our modern, technologically driven society. Algorithmic tools that are embedded to “enhance” the user experience when information-seeking carry problematic epistemological concerns. These algorithms are developed and interjected into search tools by human beings who, consciously or not, tend to impart biases into the functionality of the information retrieval process. These search tools have become our primary arbiters of knowledge and have been granted relatively unmitigated sovereignty over our perceptions of reality and truth. This article provides broader awareness of how the bias embedded within these algorithmic systems structures users’ perception and knowledge of the world, preserving traditional power hierarchies and the marginalization of specific groups of people, and examines the implications of algorithmic search systems on information literacy instruction from a critical pedagogical perspective.