Examining the Relationship Between Dispositional News Literacy and Discernment of Real and Misleading News: Cross-national Evidence

Abstract

Abstract The importance of news literacy to attenuate belief in and spread of misinformation has been emphasized by scholars and educators in recent years. This research note presents the first cross-national evidence demonstrating how dispositional news literacy (NL) is related to individuals’ discernment of true and false news on social media. Respondents in the United States (N = 205), United Kingdom (N = 205), and Hong Kong (N = 222) saw 10 true and 10 false social media posts in random order in their native languages and rated the accuracy of the posts. Regression analyses showed that higher news literacy was related to better discernment of news veracity in all three samples, though the pattern of discernment differed. Our findings demonstrate the utility of a holistic measure of news literacy that can be applied to comparative contexts. Moreover, they show the normative benefits of dispositional news literacy that could promote better news accuracy discernment in different societies around the world.