Frame 1: Authority is Constructed and Contextual

Breaking this concept down will make it easier to understand.

Start with the word Authority.

At the root of the word authority is the word author, so let’s start there. Ask yourself, who wrote the piece of information you’re reading? Why are they writing? What stake do they have in the information they’re presenting? What are their credentials (you can google their name to learn more about them)? Who are they affiliated with: a university, a company? Are they trying to make a profit? These are important questions that need answers.

Authority is Constructed.

Have you ever heard the phrase social constructs? Some people say gender is a social construct or language (written and spoken) is a construct. Constructed basically means humans made it up at some point to instill social order in their communities. Social constructs are not observable scientifically inevitable facts, meaning, our social order is not part of the nature of things, nor is it derived from the laws of nature. In fact, social order is constructed by humans and is a human product (Berger & Luckmann, 2011). Social constructs permeate our perception, understanding, and knowledge of the world. Social constructs define our perception of reality making universal objectivity difficult to achieve.

When we say authority is constructed, we are saying individuals and society select who is given authority. Generally, the legitimacy of authority exists because it has been acknowledged for a long time and people feel obligated to accept it. However, people feel obligated to select and respect authority figures too often without recognizing that authority may be awarded or displayed in unexpected ways.

For example, a common way of assessing authority is by looking at an author’s education. We are inclined to trust someone with a PhD over someone with a high school diploma because we think the person with a PhD has authority and is smarter. That’s an example of a construct. We are conditioned to think that someone with more education is smarter than people with less education but we don’t know it for a fact.

There are a lot of reasons someone might not seek out higher education and have a PhD. They might have to work full time, or take care of a family, or maybe they just never wanted to go to college. None of these factors impact someone’s intelligence or their ability to think critically.

Here is an example. If aliens land on South Padre Island in Texas, there will probably be many witnesses contributing information about the event. Someone with a PhD in astronomy like Avi Loeb might write an article about the extraterrestrial beings because he observed the event, is an authority on the subject, and is a tenured Harvard professor. If he did write an article, it would likely be taken seriously.

Additionally, a teenager on the island witnessed the aliens land and has direct experience of the event too. Should the teenager be taken seriously? In this example, both have authority to discuss the extraterrestrial beings because they witnessed the event, even though only one has a PhD in astronomy.

We should not think someone with more education is inherently more trustworthy, or smarter, or has more authority all the time. Some people who are authorities on a subject are highly educated, some are not.

Similarly, let’s say a teenager films the aliens landing and streams it live on Facebook. At the same time, a police officer gives an interview on the news that says something contradicting the video evidence. In this case, the teenager’s information has more convincing force than the police officer’s interview! Many of us are raised to trust certain people automatically based on their jobs, but that’s also a social construct. The great thing about critical thinking is that we can identify what is fact and fiction, and we can decide for ourselves who to trust.

You can take the concept of authority one step further and apply it to scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are published for specific fields of study and their aim and scope is to provide insight, research, and analysis on topics that are of significance to scholars and students. These publications are more authoritative than magazines published for the general public because of their high-quality control. Only exceptional articles get published in scholarly journals.

Additionally, some scholarly journals have more authority and prestige than others. There is a ranking system used to measure the impact scholarly journals have within a branch of academic study; that is to say, some journals are identified as influencing a scholarly conversation more than others. For example, the journal JAMA Internal Medicine has a ranking high among internal medicine journals and the Journal of Marketing has a ranking high among business marketing journals.

The final word is Contextual.

The word contextual and its use is a little easier to understand. Here is an example. If you go to the hospital and a medical doctor takes out your appendix, you will probably be happy with the outcome. If you go to the hospital and Dr. Neil Postman, a professor of education, takes out your appendix, you’re probably going to be less happy with the results.

Medical doctors have authority in the context of medicine. Dr. Neil Postman has authority in the context of education.

This applies to experiential authority, too. If an 8^th grade teacher tells me what it’s like to be a 4^th grade teacher, I will not trust their authority. I will however trust a 4^th grade teacher to tell me about teaching 4^th grade. Context is a critical factor when assessing authority, which means, the circumstances and situation in which we assign authority needs to be evaluated.

Here is another way to think about authority and context. It matters less who an author is than who an author is talking with, how the information is received, and the reasons an author might be engaged in the conversation. Authority is not a simple binary (either you have it, or you don’t), but is instead determined in context, in conversation, and in relationship with structures of power that [may] privilege some voices over others (Drabinsky, 2016).

The Takeaways:

Questioning authority isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s imperative that we do question authority, just not indiscriminately.

A social construct is something that exists not in objective reality but because of human interaction. It exists because humans agree that it exists.

Just because someone says it, it doesn’t make it true.

Society regulates and determines who is an authority, and society influences our point of view, frame of reference, perspective, and social orientation.

Authority is always determined in the context of the audience.

Critically examine all your information – be it a short blog post or a scholarly article. Use your critical thinking skills and ask relevant questions about origins, context, and suitability for your current information need.

Ask Yourself

• In what context are you an authority?
• If you needed to figure out how to do a kickflip on a skateboard, who would you ask?
  • Who’s an authority in that situation?
• Are some publications more authoritative than others?