Scaffolding resilience: the influence of an iSchool’s media and information literacy courses
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47989/ir31iConf64287Keywords:
Media and information literacy, Fake news, Perceived accuracy,, Sharing intentionsAbstract
Introduction. We investigated the influence of an iSchool’s media and information literacy (MIL) courses on resilience to fake news. MIL interventions have been proposed to improve accuracy detection and reduce sharing intentions. This study sought to highlight attributes that facilitate resilience.
Method. This preliminary study employed purposive sampling to recruit students who had taken either of the two MIL courses offered (N = 34), and those who had not (N = 32). A total of sixty-six students (N = 66) were asked to identify fake news headlines and indicate their intentions to share them through a survey via Formbricks.
Analysis. This study utilised a mixed-method design. Quantitative analysis used One-Way ANOVAs to compare the accuracy and sharing scores between the two groups. Qualitative analysis was done to thematically analyse students’ evaluative strategies.
Results. Findings show that MIL-educated students did not significantly differ in detecting accuracy or reducing sharing intentions compared to non-MIL students. However, MIL-educated students showed greater verification practices and more consistent standards of detection, which suggest the long-term resilience to fake news.
Conclusion. Integrating MIL across curricula not only builds technical competence but also nurtures evaluative habits and ethical orientations needed to navigate today’s polarised digital publics.
References
Amazeen, M. A., Vargo, C. J., & Hopp, T. (2018). Reinforcing Attitudes in a Gatewatching News Era: Individual-Level Antecedents to Sharing Fact-Checks on Social Media. Communication Monographs. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2018.1521984
Apuke, O. D., & Omar, B. (2021). Fake News and COVID-19: Modelling the predictors of fake news sharing among social media users. Telematics and Informatics, 56, 101475. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101475
Chung, M., & Kim, N. (2021). When I Learn the News Is False: How Fact-Checking Information Stems the Spread of Fake News via Third-Person Perception. Human Communication Research, 47(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqaa010
Cherner, T. S., & Curry, K. (2019). Preparing Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Media Literacy: A Response to ‘Fake News’. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 11(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2019-11-1-1
Dar Juan, E.J.F. (2023). The design, development, and implementation of an LIS general education course for non-LIS university students in the Philippines. In I. Sserwanga, A. Goulding, H. Moulaison-Sandy, J.T. Du, A.L. Soares, V. Hessami, & R.D. Frank (Eds.), Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity (iConference 2023), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13971. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28035-1_32
Guess, A. M., Lerner, M., Lyons, B., Montgomery, J. M., Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., & Sircar, N. (2020). A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(27). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920498117
Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2021). Information Literacy challenges in digital culture: Conflicting engagements of trust and doubt. Information, Communication & Society, 24(8), 1176–1191. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1851389
Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2022). Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy: The Crisis of Information (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003163237
Hameleers, M. (2020). Separating truth from lies: comparing the effects of news media literacy interventions and fact-checkers in response to political misinformation in the US and Netherlands. Information, Communication & Society, 25(1), 110–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1764603
Huang, G., Jia, W., & Yu, W. (2024). Media literacy interventions improve resilience to misinformation: A meta-analytic investigation of overall effect and moderating factors. Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502241288103
Jang, S. M., Mortensen, T. M., & Liu, J. (2019). Does media literacy help identification of fake news? Information literacy helps, but other literacies don’t. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219869406
Khan, M. L., & Idris, I. K. (2019). Recognise misinformation and verify before sharing: a reasoned action and information literacy perspective. Behaviour & Information Technology, 38(12), 1194–1212. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1578828
Koltay, T. (2011). The Media and the Literacies: Media Literacy, Information Literacy, Digital Literacy. Media, Culture & Society, 33(2), 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443710393382
Kondamudi, M. R., Sahoo, S. R., Chouhan, L., & Yadav, N. (2023). A comprehensive survey of fake news in social networks: Attributes, features, and detection approaches. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences, 35(6), 101571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2023.101571
Korona, M., & Hutchison, A. (2023). Integrating media literacy across the content areas. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(4), 999–1019. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.517
Lazer, D. M. J., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., Metzger, M. J., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S. A., Sunstein, C. R., Thorson, E. A., Watts, D. J., & Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998
Mihailidis, P., & Thevenin, B. (2013). Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764213489015
Moore, R.C., & Hancock, J.T. (2022). A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news. Scientific reports, 12(1), 6008. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08437-0
Narang, P., Singh, A. V., & Monga, H. (2024). Sentiment score-based classification for fake news using machine learning and LSTM-BiLSTM. Soft Computing, 28, 10983–11000. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-024-09884-9
Ong, J. C., & Cabañes, J. V. (2018). Architects of networked disinformation: Behind the scenes of troll accounts and fake news production in the Philippines. University of Massachusetts Amherst https://scholarworks.umass.edu/entities/publication/01d06f54-c7f2-4103-96c1-168a16f9028b
Parrott, J. (2018). Finding Truth in the Age of Misinformation: Information Literacy in Islam, Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/42169/2/FINAL-Finding-Truth-in-the-Age-of-Misinformation_-Information-Literacy-in-Islam.pdf
Pei, L., Olgado, B. S., & Crooks, R. (2021). Market, testbed, backroom: The redacted internet of Facebook’s Discover. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445754
Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021). The Psychology of Fake News. In Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Vol. 25, Issue 5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007
Roozenbeek, J., Traberg, C. S., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation. Royal Society Open Science, 9(5), 211719. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211719
Saldaña, M., & Santos, M. (2023). Sherlock-wannabes or when the audience fact-checks: How ideology, education, and alternative media use explain fact-checking behaviors. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 29(1), 245–257. https://doi.org/10.5209/esmp.88097
Santos, Y. T. P. (2024). Media and Information Literacy for All: An Analysis of the Content and Pedagogy in a University-Level Course. The International Information & Library Review, 56(3), 237–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572317.2024.2342211
Scheibenzuber, C., Hofer, S., & Nistor, N. (2021). Designing for fake news literacy training: A problem-based undergraduate online course. Computers in Human Behavior, 121, 106796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106796
Semenova, Y., & Sotnikova, S. (2021). Developing media literacy skills of future specialists in the contemporary teacher training education. SHS Web of Conferences, 97, 01033. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20219701033
Steward, P. (2017). An Analysis of the Jamaican Grades 1-6 Curriculum for the Development of a Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue Cross-Curriculum. Iasl Annual Conference Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.29173/iasl7176
Wickham, H., & Bryan, J. (2025). readxl: Read Excel Files. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readxl
Wickham, H., François, R., Henry, L., Müller, K., & Vaughan, D. (2023). dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr
Wu, Y. (2023). Predicting Fact-Checking Health Information Before Sharing Among People With Different Levels of Altruism: Based on the Influence of Presumed Media Influence. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 16(1), 1495–1508 . https://doi.org/10.2147/prbm.s404911
Yap, J., & Manabat, A. (2018). When the Library Steps In. Journal of Information Literacy, 12(2), 94–110. https://doi.org/10.11645/12.2.2514
Yousuf, M., & Habib, A. M. (2023). Influences of media routines on fact-checking: Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, 38(2). https://doi.org/10.58997/smc.v38i2.117s
Zhou, Q., Li, B., Scheibenzuber, C., & Li, H. (2023). Fake news land? Exploring the impact of social media affordances on user behavioral responses: A mixed-methods research. Computers in Human Behavior, 148, 107889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107889
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Frey Aura Galario , Dan Anthony Dorado , Benedict Salazar Olgado
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
