Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions

Abstract

It has been widely argued that social media users with low digital literacy—who lack fluency with basic technological concepts related to the internet—are more likely to fall for online misinformation, but surprisingly little research has examined this association empirically. In a large survey experiment involving true and false news posts about politics and COVID-19, we found that digital literacy is indeed an important predictor of the ability to tell truth from falsehood when judging headline accuracy. However, digital literacy is not a robust predictor of users’ intentions to share true versus false headlines. This observation resonates with recent observations of a substantial disconnect between accuracy judgments and sharing intentions. Furthermore, our results suggest that lack of digital literacy may be useful for helping to identify people with inaccurate beliefs, but not for identifying those who are more likely to spread misinformation online.

Thinking more or thinking differently? Using drift-diffusion modeling to illuminate why accuracy prompts decrease misinformation sharing

“…It is important to bear in mind the difference between sharing and accuracy judgments, which have been shown to be largely distinct Sirlin et al, 2021). Our findings challenge a dual-process interpretation of the accuracy prompt effect on news sharing.…”

“…"; Thomson & Oppenheimer, 2016) that cue an incorrect intuitive response (first place), but people who spend more time deliberating are more likely to answer correctly (second place) (Travers et al, 2016). Notably, people who perform better on the CRT can not only better discern true from false news (Bago et al, 2020;Pennycook & Rand, 2019;Ross et al, 2021), but may also share higher-quality news (Mosleh et al, 2021;Pennycook et al, 2020;but see Osmundsen et al, 2021;Sirlin et al, 2021).…”

How Do Adult Digital Literacy Curricula Address Problematic Information?

“…Previous research has shown that adult education and digital literacy training can help adults learn to navigate problematic information (Seo et al, 2020;Sirlin et al, 2021). Problematic information is an umbrella term that includes information that is "inaccurate, misleading, inappropriately attributed, or all together fabricated" (Jack, 2017).…”

It Doesn’t Matter How Many “Doses”: One-Shots Aren’t Cures

“…As other librarians have noted, "The tactics we've taught students for evaluating items one at a time provide slim defenses against the networked efforts of organizations that flood feeds, timelines, and search results." 3 In fact, as has been recently confirmed in a study conducted on digital literacy, 4 the ability to correctly evaluate information does not predict whether an individual will choose to spread misinformation. While this study named the literacy at hand as "digital," the competencies involved clearly have overlap with what librarians consider to be information literacy and with the content of so many of our one-shots.…”