Following experts' calls that information literacy interventions can inoculate against misleading political information, this study examines how students who have undergone an information literacy training evaluate political information one year after the classroom training. The intervention consisted of a one-semester information literacy course…

In early February 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) named a new kind of media consumption ailment, saying, "The 2019-nCoV outbreak and response has been accompanied by a massive 'infodemic'--an over-abundance of information--some accurate and some not that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when…

The dissemination of information via social media is important, particularly during a public health emergency. However, while it is undoubtedly useful in the targeting of genuine health communications, social media may also be used to spread health-related misinformation at times of disease outbreak or pandemic. The study presented here researches…

Evaluating the credibility of online information, a key component of digital literacy, is challenging for secondary students because they often rely on superficial strategies that do little to help them differentiate between information and disinformation. For example, our research has shown that students are prone to believe sites that appear…

To determine how undergraduate students engage with digital news, researchers at Davidson College surveyed 511 incoming first-year students on their news consumption habits and asked them to evaluate screenshots of news stories. The researchers found that a high percentage of the students were accessing news through social media platforms and that…

Online consumer health information (OCHI) is being used at an unprecedented rate, and this trend is expected to continue. Most people have used OCHI, and many may have seen the outcomes of this use (either positive or negative or both). Education and income, as indicators of socioeconomic status, are important contextual factors influencing OCHI…

To achieve higher science literacy, both students and the public require discipline-specific information literacy in the sciences. Scientific information literacy is a core component of the scientific process. In addition to teaching how to find and evaluate resources, scientific information literacy should include teaching the process of…

Researchers at Brigham Young University studied first-year students' information evaluation behaviours of open-access, popular news-based, non-academic source material on a variety of subjects. Using think-aloud protocols and screen-recording, researchers coded most and least used evaluation behaviours. Students most used an article's sources,…

As online research has become an increasingly standard activity for middle school and high school students, Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) has simultaneously emerged as the bane of many teachers who include research-focused assignments in their courses. An online encyclopedia that allows anyone to edit its entries, Wikipedia has educators…

Concerns about the potentially dubious nature of online information and users' ability to evaluate it appropriately prompted this research on college students' use of Web-based information, their perceptions of information credibility, and their online verification behaviors. Two studies were conducted to address these issues. Results of the first…

In the past two decades, substantial changes in pedagogy, advances in technology, and new emphases on critical reading, writing, and thinking across the curriculum have swept the educational landscape of the United States. Although "many students are familiar with some technological elements (notably e-mail and Web browsing), few demonstrate the…