Teaching Citizens to Identify Fake News: Tests of Information Literacy Campaigns

• In Event: Fake News, Real Consequences

Abstract

Recent research on fake new stories in the places including the U.S., Brazil, and Nigeria indicate that these stories often appeal to populist fears of different religious, economic, or ethnic groups (Di Tella, & McAra 2017). Growing awareness about the prevalence of fake news stories has sparked fears that citizens would make judgments or engage in political actions based on inaccurate information. These fears proved prescient. Empirical research suggests that citizens are exposed to a substantial amount of misinformation (Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler 2018), many believe inaccurate information and use that inaccurate information when making political judgements (Gaines et al 2007, Hochschild & Einstein 2015), and that some of this misinformation may contribute to divisive political activities, including riots and politically motivated violence (McLaughlin 2018; Mozer 2018).

To combat fake news, nonprofit organizations, governments, and even school districts have designed and implemented information literacy campaigns to improve citizens’ ability to differentiate real news from fake. Yet while research explores the characteristics of information consumption among those best evaluate the accuracy of news stories (Caulfield 2017; Wineburg & McGrew 2017), little research examines the effectiveness of various strategies taught as part of information literacy campaigns. The proposed paper explores the effectiveness of two of these strategies on subjects’ ability to differentiate accurate from inaccurate information: teaching individuals to read laterally (checking other sources’ evaluations of the story’s source) and to identify common structural characteristics of fake news stories. Results promise to provide those interested in designing information literacy campaigns a better understanding of the effectiveness of available strategies.

To test the effectiveness of information literacy campaign techniques, I conducted two separate experiments. The first was an online experiment administered to a national sample through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The second was administered to undergraduate students on a campus in the southeast. Experimental subjects viewed one of three power point presentations. Two of the presentations outlined one of the information literacy techniques described above. Each of the presentations ran approximately five minutes, including narration, and provided subjects with examples of implementing each technique. The third presentation ran for approximately the same amount of time, covering a topic unrelated to information literacy. After viewing the presentations, subjects answered a battery of questions about socio-demographic characteristics, news consumption, personality and political attitudes toward government and media institutions.

Following these questions, individuals evaluated eight different news stories. Four of these stories were fake news stories. Three of the stories involved fake news stories that would appeal to Republicans and three to Democrats. Two of these partisan fake news stories involved a derogatory statement misattributed to a politician of the opposite party, two a positive endorsement for a member of the same party that was never made, and two that mischaracterized an issue central to a party’s agenda. The remaining two stories covered less partisan/politicized issues. Subjects then rated the accuracy of the stories on a five-point scale and assessed their confidence in the ratings provided.

Organizations from nation states to school districts are increasingly designing campaigns aimed at improving citizens’ ability to differentiate between real and fake news, seeking to increase the quality of citizens’ judgments. Unfortunately, little research tests that efficacy of these campaigns. This paper undertakes such tests, indicating that teaching people to read laterally and to recognize common characteristics found in fake news stories each have a small, but positive, effect on their ability to correctly identify fake news. These effects, however, are limited when stories are highly partisan or those exposed to the information literacy campaigns are themselves strong partisans. These results suggest that reading laterally and learning to recognize characteristics of fake news may alleviate some of the effects of fake news and misinformation, making them valuable additions to information literacy campaigns particularly among populations who do not identify as strong partisans.

Author

• Leslie Caughell, Virginia Wesleyan University