Teachers need new instructional strategies and systemwide support to educate students about the threats that racism, hyper-partisanship, and disinformation pose to democracy. Nicole Mirra, Sarah McGrew, Joseph Kahne, Antero Godina Garcia, and Brendesha Tynes explore the three major elements of digital citizenship education -- safety and civility,…

In a study conducted across an urban school district, we tested a classroom-based intervention in which students were taught online evaluation strategies drawn from research with professional fact checkers. Students practiced the heuristic of "lateral reading": leaving an unfamiliar website to search the open Web before investing…

Background/Context: The Internet has democratized access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as dispassionate analysis. Despite mounting attention to the problem of online misinformation and growing agreement that digital literacy efforts are important, prior…

This study investigated how high school students evaluated online information on social and political topics. Eighteen juniors and seniors, at a school that attempts to leverage technology to personalize learning, thought aloud as they completed online reasoning tasks. Three themes emerged from analyses of think-aloud data. First, students…

Background: Young people increasingly turn to the Internet for information about social and political issues. However, they struggle to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information they encounter online. Aims: This pilot study investigated whether a focused curricular intervention could improve university students' ability to make sound…

Prior research suggests that high school students often struggle to evaluate online content; however, with support, they can learn to conduct more effective digital evaluations. This study extends our understanding of how students attend to the source of online information and the role instruction may play in changing students' evaluation of…

In recent years--and especially since the 2016 presidential election--numerous media organizations, newspapers, and policy advocates have made efforts to help Americans become more careful consumers of the information they see online. In K-12 and higher education, the main approach has been to provide students with checklists they can use to…