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Title

Chaos creator: Misinformation inoculation in information literacy instruction.

Authors

Goodsett, Mandi

Abstract

Combating the spread of misinformation is a struggle that has inspired considerable research in the fields of psychology, education, political science, and information science, among others. Such research has found that "prebunking" or "inoculation" techniques--strategies that reduce the acceptance of misinformation before one has encountered it--have had marked success. However, there is little evidence that librarians are deliberately employing inoculation techniques in their information literacy (IL) instruction. Via a quasi-experimental study, this research explores the effect of prebunking techniques in an IL instruction session on undergraduate students' ability to recognise misinformation. The prebunking techniques are delivered through a competitive game called Chaos Creator, based on the Bad News game developed by researchers at Cambridge University. Results of the study show that misinformation inoculation techniques are more effective than the popular source evaluation tool, the CRAP test, in helping students identify misinformation. However, misinformation inoculation techniques can backfire, causing students to become overly sceptical of trustworthy messages.

Subjects

INFORMATION literacy; RESEARCH personnel; UNDERGRADUATES; INFORMATION science; VACCINATION; LIBRARY orientation

Publication

Journal of Information Literacy, 2024, Vol 18, Issue 2, p1

ISSN

1750-5968

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.11645/18.2.13