A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India

Widespread belief in misinformation circulating online is a critical challenge for modern societies. While research to date has focused on psychological and political antecedents to this phenomenon, few studies have explored the role of digital media literacy shortfalls. Using data from preregistere...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 117; no. 27; p. 15536
Main Authors: Guess, Andrew M, Lerner, Michael, Lyons, Benjamin, Montgomery, Jacob M, Nyhan, Brendan, Reifler, Jason, Sircar, Neelanjan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 07.07.2020
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Communication
Female
Humans
India
Internet-Based Intervention
Literacy
Male
Middle Aged
Social Media - statistics & numerical data
Surveys and Questionnaires - statistics & numerical data
Technology - education
United States
Young Adult
United States
India
digital literacy
misinformation
social media
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Widespread belief in misinformation circulating online is a critical challenge for modern societies. While research to date has focused on psychological and political antecedents to this phenomenon, few studies have explored the role of digital media literacy shortfalls. Using data from preregistered survey experiments conducted around recent elections in the United States and India, we assess the effectiveness of an intervention modeled closely on the world's largest media literacy campaign, which provided "tips" on how to spot false news to people in 14 countries. Our results indicate that exposure to this intervention reduced the perceived accuracy of both mainstream and false news headlines, but effects on the latter were significantly larger. As a result, the intervention improved discernment between mainstream and false news headlines among both a nationally representative sample in the United States (by 26.5%) and a highly educated online sample in India (by 17.5%). This increase in discernment remained measurable several weeks later in the United States (but not in India). However, we find no effects among a representative sample of respondents in a largely rural area of northern India, where rates of social media use are far lower.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1920498117