Factors Affecting Students’ Level of Believability and Online Disinformation

The recent proliferation of online disinformation has affected the way people perceive news items. The factors that affect the audiences’ belief of false information are bots, cyber troops, length of information/full news item, scrolling, skepticism, social media bubbles/echo chambers and sources. The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the factors affecting participants’ level of believability and online disinformation. The descriptive correlational method was used with 66 AB Com. freshmen and seniors enrolled in the Academic Year 2023-2024 as participants. The researchers collected responses through online surveys including their demographic profile, the frequency of exposure to the factors and their level of believability on online disinformation. The results showed that the participants were mostly 18 to 24 years old, female and media literate. The factors bots, cyber troops, full news item, echo chambers or social media bubbles and the source correlated with the participants’ level of believability on online disinformation increasing their ability to enhance their media literacy while the factors scrolling, and skepticism did not correlate with the participants’ level of believability on online disinformation decreasing their ability to enhance their media literacy.