Information Literacy vs. Misinformation

Mis- and disinformation are widely recognized as societal challenges. They are frequent components of uncertain situations in which information consumers are challenged to make decisions based on incomplete, unreliable, or conflicting evidence. Coping with misinformation and taking adequate decisions in such situations require specific cognitive abilities regarded as components of information and media literacy. In this project, we explore the epistemic cognition associated with the evaluation of online information and develop corresponding environments in which effective evaluation strategies can be trained.

Which cognitive strategies are effective components of media/information literacy that correctly identify misinformation?

In which environments can these cognitive strategies be trained?

What are the training effects of these environments?

Nistor, N., Artmann, B., Isik, D., Neziri, N., & Stanciu, D. (2025). Knowledge types and cognitive processing modes associated with online news credibility assessment: An interview study. Computers in Human Behavior, 172, Article 108721. Link

Artmann, B., Scheibenzuber, C. & Nistor, N. (2023). Elementary school students’ information literacy: Instructional design and evaluation of a pilot training focused on misinformation. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 15(2), 31–43. Link

Artmann, B., Scheibenzuber, C., Fendt, M., & Nistor, N. (2023). Lateral reading against misinformation: The cognitive processing level mediates the intervention effect on the news credibility assessment performance. In O. Viberg, I. Jivet, P. J. Muñoz-Merino, M. Perifanou, & T. Papathoma (Eds.), Responsive and sustainable educational futures. The 18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2023, Aveiro, Portugal, September 4–8, 2023 (pp. 531–535), Proceedings. Springer. Link

Fendt, M., Nistor, N., Scheibenzuber, C., & Artmann, B. (2023). Sourcing against misinformation: Effects of a scalable lateral reading training based on cognitive apprenticeship. Computers in Human Behavior, 146, Article 107820. Link

Scheibenzuber, C., Neagu, L. M., Ruseti, S., Artmann, B., Bartsch, C., Kubik, M., Dascalu, M., Trausan-Matu, S., & Nistor, N. (2023). Dialog in the echo chamber: Fake news framing predicts emotion, argumentation and dialogic social knowledge building in subsequent online discussions. Computers in Human Behavior, 140, Article 107587. Link

Scheibenzuber, C., Hofer, S., & Nistor, N. (2021). Designing for fake news literacy training: A problem-based undergraduate online-course. Computers in Human Behavior, 121, Article 106796. Link