Boosting fact-checking in the classroom: verifying war photos and the pitfalls of overconfidence in education against disinformation

This study investigates the learning outcomes of a classroom-based intervention designed to help upper-secondary students verify the time and location of war-related photographs, thereby improving their ability to navigate visual disinformation, specifically concerning the war in Ukraine. The intervention engaged 192 Swedish students (ages 15-19) in three parts: (1) a teacher-led introduction featuring a video on war-related disinformation, (2) student activities with video-based modelling of lateral reading and reverse image search, and (3) a follow-up discussion to review correct answers. Using a pre-test-post-test design with both closed and open-ended survey items, the study assessed changes in students' fact-checking abilities, use of digital tools, and confidence in their judgements. Results show that students improved in identifying both in-context and out-of-context images and increased their use of reverse image search tools. However, the study also identified an important side effect: while high-performing students became more metacognitively aware, some low-performing students showed increased confidence despite unchanged or low performance, a pattern consistent with the Dunning-Kruger effect. These findings underscore the importance of designing educational interventions against disinformation that address both cognitive skill development and metacognitive calibration, particularly for students at risk of developing unwarranted confidence in their evaluative abilities.