Fact-checking behaviors of undergraduate students

Abstract

Obtaining fact-checking skills is becoming crucial as information disorder turns into a major issue for societies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the extent to which students benefited from the fact-checking module within the news literacy (NL) training and what kind of fact-checking behavior they exhibited. The research was conducted with two different groups of university students for two years using a quasi-experimental design method. Following the training, the students conducted their fact-checking process by making more queries, mainly using news titles, and mostly clicking on news platforms. Although many of the students did not show high performance after the training, it was seen that training created a certain awareness about the verification platforms/tools. The study highlighted the importance of information literacy skills in NL training provided at the university level and the characteristics that distinguish information behaviors during fact-checking from those in other information search processes.