Online search is more likely to lead students to validate true news than to refute false ones

TL;DR

This study investigates how young people judge online information veracity amid widespread misinformation. It uses an experiment with six news items and a three-phase task structure (Background, Reaction, Perception) allowing participants to search the web and update their judgments, while collecting demographic and cognitive data. Results show online search significantly improves accuracy judgments for true headlines ($p<0.001$) but does not significantly reduce false-headline accuracy ($p=0.79$), and participants shift item-specific judgments more than general topic opinions. The study finds a shift toward online information sources after searching and reports an overall post-search accuracy of about 84%, with no strong demographic predictors, providing guidance for tailored digital information literacy strategies for youth.

Abstract

With the spread of high-speed Internet and portable smart devices, the way people access and consume information has drastically changed. However, this presents many challenges, including information overload, personal data leakage, and misinformation diffusion. Across the spectrum of risks that Internet users face nowadays, this work focuses on understanding how young people perceive and deal with false information. Within an experimental campaign involving 183 students, we presented six different news items to the participants and invited them to browse the Internet to assess the veracity of the presented information. Our results suggest that online search is more likely to lead students to validate true news than to refute false ones. We found that students change their opinion about a specific piece of information more often than their global idea about a broader topic. Also, our experiment reflected that most participants rely on online sources to obtain information and access the news, and those getting information from books and Internet browsing are the most accurate in assessing the veracity of a news item. This work provides a principled understanding of how young people perceive and distinguish true and false pieces of information, identifying strengths and weaknesses amidst young subjects and contributing to building tailored digital information literacy strategies for youth.

Figures (12)

• Figure 1: Illustration of the change in accuracy levels between Reaction and Perception phases for true and false news. (a) True news: p-value $<$ 0.001. (b) False news: p-value $=$0.79.
• Figure 2: Changes in participants’ general opinion about the topic between the Background and Perception for the true and false news. (a) True news: p-value $<$ 0.05. (b) False news: p-value $=$0.33.
• Figure 3: Accuracy Success distribution for the six different news items during the Reaction and Perception phases. Every pair of bars represents the topic of the news item along with its veracity within brackets ("T" stands for a true news item, whereas "F" stands for a false news item). ***: p-value $<$ 0.001. There is no statistically significant difference between accuracy at Reaction and Perception phases for tasks 2 and 3.
• Figure 4: Distribution of information sources before and after online search.
• Figure 5: Distribution of information sources chosen during the Perception phase for the participants that answered social media to question 1.3 of the Background phase.