Students Evaluating and Corroborating Digital News
In this study, we investigate how 2,216 Swedish upper secondary schoolstudents' performances of sourcing, evaluating evidence, and corroboratingdigital news relate to their background, educational orientation attitudes,and self-rated skills. We used a combined online survey and performancetest to investigate students' abilities to evaluate online news. Findingsconfirm and challenge previous research results about civic onlinereasoning. The most prominent effect on performance is the appreciationof credible news. This attitude is related to students' abilities to sourcenews, evaluate texts and images, and corroborate a misleading climatechange website. We also found a digital civic literacy divide betweenstudents on theoretical and vocational programs with different knowledge,skills, and attitudes. Noting the democratic challenge of misinformation, wecall for more research on how education can support digital civic literacy ingeneral and specific ways.