Effects of Different Media Literacy Messaging on Fact-Checking Behaviours

The final speaker in this THREATPIE panel at ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is Patrick van Erkel, who explores the role of media literacy in addressing misinformation. Media or news literacy has been promoted substantially in response to the infodemic of mis- and disinformation in recent years, and some such approaches can be affective. But what are the mechanisms for such effects: do they genuinely increase news literacy, or simply create more general distrust in the media? Does the framing of news literacy messages play a role here?

The present study thus begins by assuming that news literacy messages will generally have an effect, and explores whether a positive frame (emphasising reliable news sources) will have a different level of effect from a negative frame (warning of fake news sources) or a mixed frame; and whether the number of suggestions in news literacy messages make a difference. This was tested with respondents in Belgium and the Netherlands, who were warned about misinformation, and then asked to rate real and fake news stories for accuracy.

News literacy messages did work in general, and the mixed and especially the fake news frame worked better than the reliable news frame. There did not seem to be a general spillover effect that made participants sceptical of all news; but longer-term effects that were beyond the scope of this study might still emerge. Warnings of lack of sourcing and language errors also worked: sensitising people to these potential problems does help them to detect them. But of course longer-term observations, for a variety of issue types and messaging, are required to develop a greater perspective on all of these.