In this study we investigate the abilities to determine the credibility of digital news among 483 teenagers. Using an online survey with a performance test we assess to what extent teenagers are able to determine the credibility of different sources, evaluate credible and biased uses of evidence, and corroborate information. Many respondents fail to identify the credibility of false, biased and vetted news. Respondents who value the importance of credible news seem to hold a mindset helping them to determine credibility better than other respondents. In contrast, respondents self-reporting to be good at searching information online and who find information online trustworthy are not very good at civic online reasoning. Our findings, which may be linked to theories of disciplinary literacy, science curiosity and overconfidence, provide a basis for further research of how to better understand and support civic online reasoning in classrooms and society.

Educational and technical resources are regarded as central in combating disinformation and safeguarding democracy in an era of ‘fake news’. In this study, we investigated whether a professional fact-checking tool could be utilised in curricular activity to make pupils more skilled in determining the credibility of digital news and to inspire them to use digital tools to further their transliteracy and technocognition. In addition, we explored how pupils’ performance and attitudes regarding digital news and tools varied across four countries (France, Romania, Spain, and Sweden). Our findings showed that a two-hour intervention had a statistically significant impact on teenagers’ abilities to determine the credibility of fake images and videos. We also found that the intervention inspired pupils to use digital tools in information credibility assessments. Importantly, the intervention did not make pupils more sceptical of credible news. The impact of the intervention was greater in Romania and Spain than among pupils in Sweden and France. The greater impact in these two countries, we argue, is due to cultural context and the fact that pupils in Romania and Spain learned to focus less on ’gut feelings’, increased their use of digital tools, and had a more positive attitude toward the use of the fact-checking tool than pupils in Sweden and France.

In this study, we investigate how 2,216 Swedish upper secondary school students’ performances of sourcing, evaluating evidence, and corroborating digital news relate to their background, educational orientation attitudes, and self-rated skills. We used a combined online survey and performance test to investigate students’ abilities to evaluate online news. Findings confirm and challenge previous research results about civic online reasoning. The most prominent effect on performance is the appreciation of credible news. This attitude is related to students’ abilities to source news, evaluate texts and images, and corroborate a misleading climate change website. We also found a digital civic literacy divide between students on theoretical and vocational programs with different knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Noting the democratic challenge of misinformation, we call for more research on how education can support digital civic literacy in general and specific ways.

With the rise of misinformation, there is a great need for scalable educational interventions supporting students’ abilities to determine the trustworthiness of digital news. We address this challenge in our study by developing an online intervention tool based on tutorials in civic online reasoning that aims to teach adolescents how to critically assess online information comprising text, videos and images. Our findings from an online intervention with 209 upper secondary students highlight how observational learning and feedback support their ability to read laterally and improve their performance in determining the credibility of digital news and social media posts.

Critical thinking is brought to the fore as a central competence in today’s society and in school curricula, but what may be emphasised as a general skill may also differ across school subjects. Using a mixed methods approach we identify general formulations regarding critical thinking in the Swedish curriculum of school year nine and seven more subject-specific categories of critical thinking in the syllabi and national tests in history, physics, mathematics and Swedish. By analysing 76 individual students’ critical thinking as expressed in national tests we find that a student that thinks critically in one subjects does not necessarily do so in other subjects. We find that students’ grades in different subjects are closely linked to their abilities to answer questions designed to test critical thinking in the subjects. We also find that the same formulations of critical thinking in two subjects may mean very different things when translated into assessments. Our findings suggest that critical thinking among students comprise different, subject-specific skills. The complexity of our findings highlights a need for future research to help clarify to students and researchers what it means to think critically in school.

Researchers and democratic institutions recommend serious games to improve citizens’ ability to judge misinformation (Ecker et al., 2022; European Commission, 2018, 2022; Kiili et al., 2024; Roozen...