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

Author(s)
Sirlin, Nathaniel; Epstein, Ziv; Arechar, Antonio A; Rand, David G
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Abstract
<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>
Date issued
2021
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144237
Department
Sloan School of Management; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
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

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