Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions
Name
sirlin_digital_literacy_20211206.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
709.71 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
db8e91a7cdcb3a85a8369fbc43771eee
Author(s)
Sirlin, Nathaniel
Epstein, Ziv
Arechar, Antonio A
Rand, David G
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
Publisher
Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy
Citation
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.
Version
Final published version
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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.37016/MR-2020-83
