Combating the Consequences of COVID-19 Misinformation: Comparative Analysis Among Adolescents

The subject of media literacy among adolescents is particularly relevant due to the rapid dissemination of information online, the lack of media literacy education in secondary curricula on Long Island, New York, and the prevalence of social media in the twenty-first century. This study looks at the effect of COVID-19 misinformation on the believability, level of concern, and mood of high school and middle school students on Long Island, New York in 2021. This study included high school and middle school students from four Long Island school districts. Students were given a survey that included three misinformation sources, a concern level scale, and a mood scale. As a result of this investigation, a comparative analysis of student data was compiled. While middle school students had higher believability rates than high school students, resulting in negative mood changes and high concern levels, high school students also demonstrated high levels of believability of the COVID-19 misinformation, resulting in negative mood changes and high concern levels. Early adolescent media literacy education is critical to avoiding the unpleasant mood changes and increased concern levels caused by the high believability of COVID-19 misinformation. This study demonstrates that, just as we discovered during the pandemic how critical it is to stop virus transmission, it is also critical to stop the spread of misinformation about COVID-19. Both put people in danger. Combating the negative effects of COVID-19 misinformation necessitates media literacy education.

LIKES, SARCASM AND POLITICS: YOUTH RESPONSES TO A PLATFORM-INITIATED MEDIA LITERACY CAMPAIGN ON SOCIAL MEDIA

When it comes to youth and media literacy, the focus of both research and practice has been on the integration of media literacy instruction into young people’s various educational experiences, rather than studying, implementing and evaluating such initiatives in situ, on social media—which is known to be youths’ central news source. Furthermore, existing studies focus on older platforms like Facebook or Twitter, and we lack a nuanced understanding of these dynamics on the platforms most popular with youth today. The present study aims to fill this gap, by analyzing how users responded to a media literacy education campaign on the popular youth-oriented social media app TikTok, with a focus on the lessons that we might draw in terms of targeted media literacy education initiatives for youth. Our large-scale qualitative content analysis—which included 11,449 public comments posted on 5 educational TikTok videos about media literacy—facilitated a naturalistic study of young people’s attitudes towards such initiatives. We found that reactions to the campaign were mixed, and highly political in nature. While many users appreciated the media literacy campaign and TikTok’s role in implementing it, there was also resistance to the campaign, due to factors related to video content, dissemination approach, and the very identity of TikTok as a platform. Across the board, comments were highly political, illustrating the politicized nature of media literacy education today. These reactions serve as rich feedback that can usefully inform future media literacy campaigns on social media, and especially those targeting youth audiences.