Factors Associated with Undergraduate Students’ Engagement with Socioscientific Issues Misinformation and Disinformation

Abstract The rapid spread of socioscientific issues (SSI) misinformation and disinformation threatens civic engagement, poses serious environmental and public health risks, and undermines educational efforts toward scientific literacy. This is concerning for college students, who are potentially at risk for belief in science mis/disinformation, considering their consistent use of social media. Science education must understand how factors such as sociocultural background, knowledge of science, and emotions impact students’ engagement with mis/disinformation. This mixed-methods study investigated the factors associated with postsecondary non-science major students’ evaluations of mis/disinformation in the context of three SSI and their justifications of those evaluations. Data collected included students’ demographics, mis/disinformation credibility perceptions, negative emotional response to mis/disinformation, and NOS and mis/disinformation views. Findings indicate that distinct factors such as political orientation played a crucial role, with more liberal students generally exhibiting greater distrust and negative perceptions toward misinformation vignettes compared to their conservative counterparts. Negative emotional response to the mis/disinformation vignettes, particularly the fracking and climate change vignettes, associated with students perceiving those vignettes as less credible. Additionally, students with more sophisticated views on the nature of science (NOS) and mis/disinformation tended to rate certain vignettes as less credible and expressed more skepticism. However, these associations varied between SSI contexts and students’ evaluation criteria (e.g., examining evidence, presence of expertise) through justification were applied variably and sometimes in opposing ways. This study offers novel empirical insight on how the complex interplay of political ideology, emotions, and NOS views differ across SSI contexts when people engage with mis/disinformation. Our results demonstrate the need for teachers to help students develop a “toolbox” of mis/disinformation evaluation strategies to be able to effectively and cognitively confront variable contexts.