Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions
<jats:p>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 lar...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144237 |
| _version_ | 1811084890740883456 |
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| author | Sirlin, Nathaniel Epstein, Ziv Arechar, Antonio A Rand, David G |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Sirlin, Nathaniel Epstein, Ziv Arechar, Antonio A Rand, David G |
| author_sort | Sirlin, Nathaniel |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p>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.</jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:59:11Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144237 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:59:11Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1442372023-01-27T18:24:29Z Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions Sirlin, Nathaniel Epstein, Ziv Arechar, Antonio A Rand, David G Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory <jats:p>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.</jats:p> 2022-08-04T18:32:51Z 2022-08-04T18:32:51Z 2021 2022-08-04T18:16:40Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144237 Sirlin, Nathaniel, Epstein, Ziv, Arechar, Antonio A and Rand, David G. 2021. "Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions." Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. en 10.37016/MR-2020-83 Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review |
| spellingShingle | Sirlin, Nathaniel Epstein, Ziv Arechar, Antonio A Rand, David G Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title | Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title_full | Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title_fullStr | Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title_short | Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| title_sort | digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144237 |
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