Teachers’ views on disinformation and media literacy supported by a tool designed for professional fact-checkers: perspectives from France, Romania, Spain and Sweden

Abstract

The current media eco-system has become more and more polluted by the various avatars of “fake news”. This buzz term has been widely used by academics, experts, teachers and ordinary people, in an attempt to understand and address the phenomenon of information disorder in the new media environment. However, studies have rarely questioned what teachers, key stakeholders in the media literacy field, actually understand by “fake news”, and to what extent the new digital tools available to fact-check are actually viable solutions to fight disinformation actively. In this context, we conducted focus groups (N = 34 people interviewed in 4 focus groups) with teachers in four countries (France, Romania, Spain and Sweden), in order to assess their understanding of “fake news”, as well as their perception of possible measures to combat the phenomenon, with a particular focus on digital tools. The findings show that the understanding of the concept of “fake news” differs from one country to the other, but also within the same country, with a common feature across countries: intention to deceive. Additionally, respondents identified lack of media and information literacy (MIL) in education as a major gap for combatting information disorders. Furthermore, they find that the use of digital tool for professional fact-checking needs to be repurposed or followed by pedagogical instructions to fit into the complexity of educational practices. Our findings highlight possible solutions for MIL in education using a combination of technocognition and transliteracy as theoretical framework and scaffolded pedagogical design for better adoption of fact-checking techniques.

Future journalists’ fight against disinformation: analysis of university training offers and challenges in the Spanish context

“…Regarding the hypothetical content of a subject on verification, various interviewees agreed that training in fact-checking should begin with basic teacher training, in line with the contributions of other studies (López-Romero & Aguaded, 2012;Martínez-Fresneda, 2010;Walzer, 2011). Some of the participants in this research also stated that teachers are ill-trained in media, which coincides with the results of recent investigation (Kothari & Hickerson, 2020;Nygren et al, 2022), and demanded a more practical education, prioritising the learning process rather than the content, in accordance with previous research (Kendall & McDougall, 2012).…”

“…Despite the consensus on the need to introduce media education into the school and university curriculum as a first step in the fight against disinformation (Herrero-Diz, Pérez-Escolar & Varona Aramburu, 2022;Kothari & Hickerson, 2020;McDougall, 2019;Montoya, 2005;Nygren et al, 2022), to date no study in the Spanish context has specifically investigated how journalists are trained to combat this social challenge.…”

“…A recent study comparing the views on disinformation and media literacy of upper secondary school teachers in Sweden, France, Spain and Romania (Nygren et al, 2022) shows that Spanish teachers believe that the absence of media literacy in the classroom is a central issue. Although they are not sufficiently trained to deal with disinformation, teachers do express interest in self-training and keeping abreast of their students' Internet uses and practices.…”

How good do you think you are with computers? The link between teachers’ perceived digital literacy, occupational efficacy, and psychological distress

“…Digital literacy was also suggested as one of the practical and efficient solutions to manage social media fatigue in the community (Sunil et al, 2022 ) and misinformation, particularly in educational contexts (e.g., Nygren et al, 2022 ). According to Alanoglu et al (2022), because of the importance of digital literacy in today’s world, in which technology permeates every part of life, teachers must be open to and embrace digital change and transition without reservations.…”