What I had assumed was shared knowledge wasn’t. But something else was: expertise. My students possessed cultural capital; I did not. In classrooms, cultural capital shows up in the references that land easily and the ones that require explanation. It shapes who feels immediately included and who must constantly translate between the class and their own world. I had unintentionally centered my own starting point. And that realization didn’t stop the discussion. It made me look at my syllabus. Which case studies do I assign? Whose research fills the reading list? Whose examples appear in assignment questions? 

Curriculum quietly encodes assumptions. Assessment quietly rewards familiarity. When a test question assumes knowledge of Western brands, English-language media, or specific market contexts, some students begin with recognition, while others begin from translation. That difference is not about ability. It’s about the starting point. We often talk about access to scholarly communication, paywalls, subscriptions, and databases. But there is another layer: Which knowledge is treated as a standard in the first place? What becomes foundational? What feels obvious? What never needs an explanation? 

If a globally dominant celebrity can be invisible in my classroom, what else is invisible in our systems of knowledge? In publishing, some journals are indexed in major databases while others are not. Some languages dominate citation metrics. Research from certain regions circulates widely; other work remains influential within communities but rarely enters “global” conversations. We often mistake visibility for universality. We confuse circulation with importance. That day, instead of moving past the blank stares, we stayed with them. We began mapping cultural equivalents. Taylor Swift and Miss Pooja. Hollywood and Indian cinema. Global influencers and local icons. We talked about platforms. About algorithms. How streaming services amplify certain creators across linguistic and geographic boundaries. About how “global” markets are often structured around English-language dominance. 

Without labeling it, we were practicing metaliteracy. Not just finding information. Not just analyzing it. But critically examining how it is produced, amplified, and legitimized. Questioning who gets visibility and why. Recognizing that knowledge systems are constructed. My students were not simply filling a cultural gap. They were co-creators of knowledge. And that shift changed the classroom. Instead of absorbing my examples, they brought their own. Instead of adapting to dominant references, they expanded the frame. They began to see how systems determine what becomes visible and what remains peripheral. Ownership followed. When students recognize that their lived experience counts as intellectual material, engagement deepens. They question more. They connect more. They stop seeing knowledge as something delivered to them and start seeing it as something they help shape. 

This small classroom moment reflects larger patterns. In publishing, whose work is cited widely? In research metrics, whose impact is counted? In editorial decisions, whose frameworks feel “standard”? In classrooms, whose examples feel obvious? Information privilege operates quietly across all these spaces. Efforts to make scholarly communication more open often focus on access, removing paywalls, expanding repositories, promoting open journals. Those efforts matter. But equity also requires examining assumptions. It requires asking whose knowledge travels easily and who must fight for visibility.  

The day my students didn’t know Taylor Swift was not evidence of a knowledge deficit. It was evidence of a system. I had mistaken my information environment for a shared one. When we reframed the conversation, the classroom transformed. Students debated global reach. They questioned the idea of “mainstream.” They noticed who gets amplification and who doesn’t. They were no longer adapting to my framework. They were building one with me. 

If we want a more equitable culture of scholarly communication, we must begin earlier than peer review. We must design curricula and assessments that do not quietly privilege one cultural starting point. We must move from assuming shared knowledge to constructing shared understanding. Sometimes that begins with a pop star. But it doesn’t end there. It ends with a shift, from authority to curiosity, from transmission to co-creation, from visibility to awareness. The question is not whether our students know the same references we do. The question is whether we are willing to examine why we expected them to. Somewhere between Taylor Swift and Miss Pooja lies a reminder: knowledge does not simply travel. It is carried by systems. And systems can be redesigned.