Experimental Testing of Active vs. Passive Inoculation Interventions on Adolescents’ News Discernment and Learning Enjoyment

Abstract: Adolescents increasingly rely on social media platforms for news consumption, highlighting the urgent need to equip them with the skills to differentiate between credible and deceptive information. To address this challenge, we developed two logic-based inoculation interventions suitable for classroom settings: an online game (active) and a leaflet (passive). In a school experiment involving 373 participants, we assessed students’ news discernment ability before and after exposure to the interventions, evaluating veracity discernment, fake and real news detection, and response biases. Additionally, we examined the interventions’ effects on students’ enjoyment of learning, recognizing its critical role in game-based learning. Findings show that enjoyment was significantly higher in the active intervention group compared to the passive one. However, our findings revealed no significant differences in credibility evaluation performance between the two intervention types over time. Moreover, we uncovered a paradoxical trend: while students improved in identifying fake news after the interventions, they demonstrated a decline in proficiency at identifying real news. The observed effect highlights the importance of a holistic approach to media literacy education, incorporating strategies to evaluate both fake and real news sources to mitigate unexpected backfire effects.