Check out the following fascinating story about the research fellow UHPer Kylie Fronczak (SMPA ’21) has done about digital media literacy among seniors!
I started my undergraduate career on the heels of the 2016 presidential election when terms like “fake news” and misinformation were just beginning to be discussed. As I grew at GW, studying in the School of Media and Public Affairs, the reality that this spread of online misinformation revealed itself to a major threat. This type of online content has proven itself capable of having real-world, offline implications, from fueling acts of violence to perpetuating demonstrably false ideas such as widespread election fraud and major conspiracies.
It seems as if Big Tech CEOs are being brought to Capitol Hill almost monthly to answer for their roles in this spread of misinformation and governments, advocacy groups, and academics alike are being faced with the major question of how to curb it. It seemed only fitting that I would use my senior thesis as a means of entering that conversation.
There are a number of counter-misinformation remedies – many of which social media users encountered first-hand during this past year when social media companies sought to flag potentially dubious content regarding COVID-19 or the presidential election. However, an alternative remedy is digital media literacy. Research suggests better results with this model for countering misinformation because it teaches users to critically evaluate content for themselves. In addition to testing digital media literacy as a misinformation counter, I chose to specifically evaluate seniors, those who did not grow up in the digital age, since studies suggest that it is older people in general who are the most prominent sharers of misinformation online, despite making up only a small percentage of social media users.
Using a short digital media literacy module designed by AARP, I conducted an experiment testing the effectiveness of this sort of remedy. Some were given the treatment, others were not, then all were asked to look at a series of actual Facebook posts containing news. With funding from the UPH SURE award, I was able to gather the data to answer the core questions of this project. By recruiting over 1,000 respondents, over 250 of whom were over 55 years old, I was able to gain insights based on their evaluations of the posts, along with their likelihood to share them.
While the treatment effects revealed by the experiment may not be as promising as I would have hoped when I first started off with this project, having the opportunity the learn about the research process through first-hand experiences, especially as an undergraduate, has been invaluable. And even though the results of this may not be what was originally desired, I still learned a great deal about misinformation and how non-digital natives navigate the complex online information ecosystem. I am looking forward to defending this thesis before my committee of SMPA professors later this spring to earn honors in my major.
