A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Guess AM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7355018 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Older adults are especially susceptible to fake news online, possibly because they are less digitally literate compared to younger individuals. Interventions for older adults have emerged to improve digital literacy, although there has been little evaluation of their effectiveness in improving older adults' resilience to fake news. We report the results of a digital literacy intervention for older adults administered during the 2020 U.S. election. The intervention was a 1-hour, self-directed series of interactive modules designed to teach concepts and skills for identifying misinformation online. Consistent with our pre-registered hypothesis, older adults (Mage = 67) in the treatment condition (N = 143) significantly improved their likelihood of accurately discerning fake from true news from 64% pre-intervention to 85% post-intervention. In contrast, older adults in the control condition (N = 238) did not significantly improve (from 55% to 57%). The treated older adults were also more likely to employ strategies for identifying misinformation online compared to pre-intervention and the control group.
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Project description:Some major social media companies are announcing plans to tokenize user engagements, derived from blockchain-based decentralized social media. This would bring financial and reputational incentives for engagement, which might lead users to post more objectionable content. Previous research showed that financial or reputational incentives for accuracy decrease the willingness to share misinformation. However, it is unclear to what extent such outcome would change if engagements instead of accuracy were incentivized, which is a more realistic scenario. To address this question, we conducted a survey experiment to examine the effects of hypothetical token incentives. We find that a simple nudge about the possibility of earning token-based points for the achieved user engagements increases the willingness to share different kinds of news, including misinformation. The presence of penalties for objectionable posts diminishes the positive effect of tokenization rewards on misinformation sharing, but it does not eliminate it. These results have policy implications for content moderation practices if platforms embrace decentralization and engagement tokenization.
| S-EPMC10444751 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To investigate how people assess whether politically consistent news is real or fake, two studies (N = 1,008; N = 1,397) with adult American participants conducted in 2020 and 2022 utilized a within-subjects experimental design to investigate perceptions of news accuracy. When a mock Facebook post with either fake (Study 1) or real (Study 2) news content was attributed to an alternative (vs. a mainstream) news outlet, it was, on average, perceived to be less accurate. Those with beliefs reflecting News Media Literacy demonstrated greater sensitivity to the outlet's status. This relationship was itself contingent on the strength of the participant's partisan identity. Strong partisans high in News Media Literacy defended the accuracy of politically consistent content, even while recognizing that an outlet was unfamiliar. These results highlight the fundamental importance of looking at the interaction between user-traits and features of social media news posts when examining learning from political news on social media.
| S-EPMC10562704 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveSocial media is used in the context of healthcare, for example in interventions for promoting health. Since social media are easily accessible they have potential to promote health equity. This paper studies relevant factors impacting on health equity considered in social media interventions.MethodsWe searched for literature to identify potential relevant factors impacting on health equity considered in social media interventions. We included studies that reported examples of health interventions using social media, focused on health equity, and analyzed health equity factors of social media. We identified Information about health equity factors and targeted groups.ResultsWe found 17 relevant articles. Factors impacting on health equity reported in the included papers were extracted and grouped into three categories: digital health literacy, digital ethics, and acceptability.ConclusionsLiterature shows that it is likely that digital technologies will increase health inequities associated with increased age, lower level of educational attainment, and lower socio-economic status. To address this challenge development of social media interventions should consider participatory design principles, visualization, and theories of social sciences.
| S-EPMC9719782 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We examine the role of overconfidence in news judgment using two large nationally representative survey samples. First, we show that three in four Americans overestimate their relative ability to distinguish between legitimate and false news headlines; respondents place themselves 22 percentiles higher than warranted on average. This overconfidence is, in turn, correlated with consequential differences in real-world beliefs and behavior. We show that overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial. In all, these results paint a worrying picture: The individuals who are least equipped to identify false news content are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it further.
| S-EPMC8201962 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Disinformation (fake news) is a major problem that affects modern populations, especially in an era when information can be spread from one corner of the world to another in just one click. The diffusion of misinformation becomes more problematic when it addresses issues related to health, as it can affect people at both the individual and population levels. Through the ideas proposed by cultural evolution theory, in this study, we seek to understand the dynamics of disseminating messages (cultural traits) with untrue content (maladaptive traits). For our investigation, we used the scenario caused by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as a model. The instability caused by the pandemic provides a good model for the study of adapted and maladaptive traits, as the information can directly affect individual and population fitness. Through data collected on the Twitter platform (259,176 tweets) and using machine learning techniques and web scraping, we built a predictive model to analyze the following questions: (1) Is false information more shared? (2) Is false information more adopted? (3) Do people with social prestige influence the dissemination of maladaptive traits of COVID-19? We observed that fake news features contained in messages with false information were shared and adopted as unblemished messages. We also observed that social prestige was not a determining factor for the diffusion of maladaptive traits. Even with the ability to allow connections between individuals participating in social media, some factors such as attachment to cultural traits and the formation of social bubbles can favor isolation and decrease connectivity between individuals. Consequently, in the scenario of isolation between groups and low connectivity between individuals, there is a reduction in cultural exchange between people, which interferes with the dynamics of the selection of cultural traits. Thus, maladaptive (harmful) traits are favored and maintained in the cultural system. We also argue that the local Brazilian cultural context can be a determining factor for maintaining maladaptive traits. We conclude that in an unstable (pandemic) scenario, the information transmitted on Twitter is not reliable in relation to the increase in fitness, which may occur because of the low cultural exchange promoted by the personalization of the social network and cultural context of the population.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42979-021-00836-w.
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Project description:The United States is engaged in ongoing dialogue around mental illness. To assess trends in this national discourse, we studied the volume and content of a random sample of 400 news stories about mental illness from the period 1995-2014. Compared to news stories in the first decade of the study period, those in the second decade were more likely to mention mass shootings by people with mental illnesses. The most frequently mentioned topic across the study period was violence (55 percent overall) divided into categories of interpersonal violence or self-directed (suicide) violence, followed by stories about any type of treatment for mental illness (47 percent). Fewer news stories, only 14 percent, described successful treatment for or recovery from mental illness. The news media's continued emphasis on interpersonal violence is highly disproportionate to actual rates of violence among those with mental illnesses. Research suggests that this focus may exacerbate social stigma and decrease support for public policies that benefit people with mental illnesses.
| S-EPMC4921198 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe profession of practicing medicine is based on communication, and as social media and other digital technologies play a major role in today's communication, digital literacy must be included in the medical curriculum. The value of social media has been demonstrated several times in medicine and health care, therefore it is time to prepare medical students for the conditions they will have to face when they graduate.ObjectiveThe aim of our study was to design a new e-learning-based curriculum and test it with medical students.MethodAn elective course was designed to teach students how to use the Internet, with a special emphasis on social media. An e-learning platform was also made available and students could access material about using digital technologies on the online platforms they utilized the most. All students filled in online surveys before and after the course in order to provide feedback about the curriculum.ResultsOver a 3-year period, 932 students completed the course. The course did not increase the number of hours spent online but aimed at making that time more efficient and useful. Based on the responses of students, they found the information provided by the curriculum useful for their studies and future practices.ConclusionsA well-designed course, improved by constant evaluation-based feedback, can be suitable for preparing students for the massive use of the Internet, social media platforms, and digital technologies. New approaches must be applied in modern medical education in order to teach students new skills. Such curriculums that put emphasis on reaching students on the online channels they use in their studies and everyday lives introduce them to the world of empowered patients and prepare them to deal with the digital world.
| S-EPMC5041363 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The concept of digital literacy is increasingly prevalent in the 21st century. Growing demands from the work sector for individuals to be digitally literate has prompted targeted interventions and innovations from the education sector to instil digital skills into the future workforce. However, despite efforts the digital skills gap remains visible globally. This paper explores the prominent educational frameworks and models, their advantages and limitations in 21st-century learning and teaching. Furthermore, a new innovative digital literacy model has been proposed to be integrated into the existing and future education frameworks and models to assist educationists in narrowing the digital skills gaps and preparing graduates for the work sector. The digital literacy model consists of two components: (1) the digital literacy framework- South Pacific Digital Literacy Framework (SPDLF) and (2) the digital literacy tool. The SPDLF reflects six major literacies identified for the 21st-century while the digital literacy tool--digilitFJ consists of a digital literacy measuring scale and an online intervention program. The exploratory factor analysis showed that the SPDLF was valid. On the other hand, heuristics, student attitude, and satisfaction and effectiveness of the digital literacy tool were also evaluated from the student's perspective to reflect its usefulness. The survey results also showed a positive attitude and perception of the use of the tool. Additionally, Cohen's d value showed that the digital literacy tool was effective. Therefore, if the tool is implemented and adopted, it can narrow the existing digital skills gap in the South Pacific.
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Project description:Even democracies endowed with the most active free press struggle to maintain diversity of news coverage. Consolidation and market forces may cause only a few dominant players to control the news cycle. Editorial policies may be biased by corporate ownership relations, narrowing news coverage and focus. To an increasing degree this problem also applies to social media news distribution, since it is subject to the same socio-economic drivers. To study the effects of consolidation and ownership on news diversity, we model the diversity of Chilean coverage on the basis of ownership records and social media data. We create similarity networks of news outlets on the basis of their ownership and the topics they cover. We then examine the relationships between the topology of ownership networks and content similarity to characterize how ownership affects news coverage. A network analysis reveals that Chilean media is highly concentrated both in terms of ownership as well as in terms of topics covered. Our method can be used to determine which groups of outlets and ownership exert the greatest influence on news coverage.
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