Digital Resilience Through Training Protocols: Learning To Identify Fake News On Social Media

Abstract

AbstractWe explore whether training protocols can enhance the ability of social media users to detect fake news, by conducting an online experiment (N = 417) to analyse the effect of such a training protocol, while considering the role of scepticism, age, and level of education. Our findings show a significant relationship between the training protocol and the ability of social media users to detect fake news, suggesting that the protocol can play a positive role in training social media users to recognize fake news. Moreover, we find a direct positive relationship between age and level of education on the one hand and ability to detect fake news on the other, which has implications for future research. We demonstrate the potential of training protocols in countering the effects of fake news, as a scalable solution that empowers users and addresses concerns about the time-consuming nature of fact-checking.