The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. One approach to mitigating the effect of misinformation focuses on individual-level interventions, equipping policymakers and the public with essential tools to curb the spread and influence of falsehoods. Here we introduce a toolbox of individual-level interventions for reducing harm from online misinformation. Comprising an up-to-date account of interventions featured in 81 scientific papers from across the globe, the toolbox provides both a conceptual overview of nine main types of interventions, including their target, scope and examples, and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions, including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The nine types of interventions covered are accuracy prompts, debunking and rebuttals, friction, inoculation, lateral reading and verification strategies, media-literacy tips, social norms, source-credibility labels, and warning and fact-checking labels. Kozyreva et al. review evidence from individual-level interventions for fighting online misinformation featured in 81 scientific papers. They classify the interventions in nine different types and summarize their findings in a toolbox.

Abstract Teenagers in the United States spend over 8 hours on digital devices outside of schoolwork each day (Rideout et al. The Common Sense census: media use by tweens and teens. Common Sense Media, 2021), where they encounter information that ranges from educational to toxic. Despite their fluency with digital devices, young people struggle to evaluate the information that streams across their screens. There are evidence-based approaches for helping students to become more discerning consumers of digital content. Based on research with professional fact checkers, these interventions have been proven across a range of contexts to help people learn effective evaluation strategies. Unfortunately, outdated educational approaches to digital literacy remain widely used. As states across the country adopt legislation mandating media literacy instruction, a series of research questions deserve attention: (1) How can adults be supported to learn and teach digital literacy? (2) How do schools integrate digital literacy into the curriculum? (3) How do young people’s beliefs and identities influence their evaluations? (4) How do we reach people outside of school settings and how can trusted messengers (e.g., parents, health professionals, and community leaders) provide instruction about evidence-based strategies for evaluating online information?

A growing number of educational interventions have shown that students can learn the strategies fact checkers use to efficiently evaluate online information. Measuring the effectiveness of these interventions has required new approaches to assessment because extant measures reveal too little about the processes students use to evaluate live internet sources. In this paper, we analyze two types of assessments developed to meet the need for new measures. We describe what these assessments reveal about student thinking and how they provide practitioners, policymakers, and researchers options for measuring participants’ evaluative strategies.

In June of 2022, the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which was a major victory for the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Opponents of the Second Amendment have sought to seize upon a short passage by Justice Thomas, author of the Bruen opinion, to argue in the lower courts that an originalist interpretation requires courts to look at the meaning of the Second Amendment (and thus, logically, all provisions of the Bill of Rights) when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, not in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified. But 1791 vs. 1868 is not an open question. Bruen found that the text of the Second Amendment plainly covers the right to carry arms in public. It also held that “to the extent later history contradicts what the text says, the text controls.” The Bruen Court adopted the view of then-Judge Kavanaugh in a D.C. Circuit Second Amendment case that “post-ratification adoption or acceptance of laws that are inconsistent with the original meaning of the constitutional text obviously cannot overcome or alter that text.” In discussing Heller, the Bruen Court observed that Heller’s interest in mid-to-late 19th century commentary was secondary, and was considered only for the purpose of confirming rather than contradicting the Founding era understanding.The Supreme Court has held that provisions of the Bill of Rights have only a single meaning, whether applied against the federal government or against the states. That meaning is fixed at the time of adoption; that is, in 1791. In numerous cases involving all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that have been incorporated, the relevant time period has been held to be the Founding period. None has looked primarily to the post-Civil War period to determine the scope of a provision within the Bill of Rights. And for good reason. The Reconstruction period is unusual in American history, because the North was occupying the South with military force and the South was trying to disarm the newly freed blacks. Such actions during that period are therefore not representative of either the Founding period or of the American historical tradition as a whole. To the extent mid-to-late 19th century interpretations have been discussed in cases, it was never because the understandings of the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment were found to prevail over those of the Founders in 1791. Instead, discussions of that 19th century history are treated as confirmation of the 1791 understanding. The insistence by some scholars and advocates that 1868 should control is only of importance if they believe they can show that the 1868 understanding of the Second Amendment was different from the 1791 understanding. But if the 1868 understanding is different from that of 1791, it must be rejected because it is inconsistent with the text and the original meaning that is fixed at the time of adoption in 1791, based on the understandings of those who ratified the Second Amendment.Not only has the Court never looked to 1868 as the primary period for determining the meaning of provisions of the Bill of Rights, its opinions generally do not even mention that period. Litigants in post-Bruen litigation have so far not pointed to a single Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court has looked to the time of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment as the principal period for determining the scope or meaning of a provision of the Bill of Rights. Adoption of 1868 as the proper focus for determining the meaning of the Second Amendment would mean that the Supreme Court was utterly wrong in looking to the Founding period in Heller, Caetano, and Bruen. It would also revolutionize the Supreme Court’s entire Bill of Rights jurisprudence, which has uniformly looked to the Founding period when history needs to be consulted. The Second Amendment is not a “second class right,” so if the year of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment were to be used to determine its meaning, then 1868 would also have to be used to ascertain the meaning of the other incorporated provisions of the Bill of Rights.Any argument seeking to focus on the late 19th century for the purpose of interpreting the Second Amendment should be soundly rejected. The critical time period for courts to search for historical analogues to modern-day gun control laws is the Founding period (1791), and not 1868.

The ability to find credible information online is necessary for informed civic engagement in the 21st century. This need is particularly acute for young people, who often turn to the Internet to learn about social and political issues. Preparing students to evaluate online content, particularly as it concerns social and political issues, aligns with broader efforts to reinvigorate the civic mission of colleges and universities. We analyzed how college students (n= 263) evaluated online sources about public policy issues. Results showed that a majority employed ineffective strategies for evaluating digital information. Many of the strategies students used mirrored advice found on college and university websites. These findings suggest a need to reconsider post-secondary approaches to teaching online evaluation strategies.

Educational Impact and Implications Statement This study tested the effectiveness of an intervention that taught high school students to make sound decisions on the Internet. Less than 6 hr of classroom instruction significantly improved students' judgment about the credibility of online sources. 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 attention in the site at hand. Professional development was provided to high school teachers who then implemented six 50-minute lessons in a district-mandated government course. Using a matched control design, students in treatment classrooms (n = 271) were compared to peers (n = 228) in regular classrooms. A multilevel linear mixed model showed that students in experimental classrooms grew significantly in their ability to judge the credibility of digital content. These findings inform efforts to prepare young people to make wise decisions about the information that darts across their screens.

Are today's students able to discern quality information from sham online? In the largest investigation of its kind, we administered an assessment to 3,446 high school students. Equipped with a live internet connection, the students responded to six constructed-response tasks. The students struggled on all of them. Asked to investigate a site claiming to "disseminate factual reports" on climate science, 96% never learned about the organization's ties to the fossil fuel industry. Two thirds were unable to distinguish news stories from ads on a popular website's home page. More than half believed that an anonymously posted Facebook video, shot in Russia, provided "strong evidence" of U.S. voter fraud. Instead of investigating the organization or group behind a site, students were often duped by weak signs of credibility: a website's "look," its top-level domain, the content on its About page, and the sheer quantity of information it provided. The study's sample reflected the demographic profile of high school students in the United States, and a multilevel regression model explored whether scores varied by student characteristics. Findings revealed differences in student abilities by grade level, self-reported grades, locality, socioeconomic status, race, maternal education, and free/reduced-price lunch status. Taken together, these findings reveal an urgent need to prepare students to thrive in a world in which information flows ceaselessly across their screens.

Young people turn to the Internet to become informed about the issues that concern them and their communities. How can they learn to distinguish credible information from sham? In a study conducted in an urban school district, we tested a classroom-based intervention in which students were taught evaluation strategies derived from research with professional fact checkers. We provided professional development to high school teachers who then implemented six 1-hour lessons across three months in a district-mandated government course. Using a matched/control design, students in treatment classrooms (n = 271) were compared to peers (n = 228) in regular classrooms. A cluster-randomized, repeated-measures analysis showed that students in experimental classrooms grew significantly in their ability to judge the credibility of digital content compared to students in control classrooms. We conclude by addressing how the study’s findings inform efforts to prepare students to make sense of the information that streams across their digital devices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced college students to spend more time online. Yet many studies show that college students struggle to discern fact from fiction on the Internet. A small body of research suggests that students in face-to-face settings can improve at judging the credibility of online sources. But what about asynchronous remote instruction? In an asynchronous college nutrition course at a large state university, we embedded modules that taught students how to vet websites using fact checkers’ strategies. Chief among these strategies was lateral reading, the act of leaving an unknown website to consult other sources to evaluate the original site. Students improved significantly from pretest to posttest, engaging in lateral reading more often post intervention. These findings inform efforts to scale this type of intervention in higher education.

Population Health ManagementVol. 23, No. 5 RoundtablesReflections on a Post-COVID World: Lessons from the SurgeModerator: David B. Nash, Participants: Mark D. Smith, Anand K. Parekh, Byron C. Scott, Kavita Patel, Karen Murphy, and Karen B. DeSalvoModerator: David B. NashAddress correspondence to: David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Jefferson College of Population Health, 901 Walnut Street, 10th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19017, USA E-mail Address: david.nash@jefferson.eduCollege of Population Health, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Participants: Mark D. SmithUniversity of California, San Francisco, California, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Anand K. ParekhBipartisan Policy Center, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Byron C. ScottAdjunct Faculty, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Isenberg School of Management, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.Adjunct Faculty, Jefferson University College of Population Health, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Kavita PatelBrookings Institution, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Karen MurphyGeisinger, Danville, Pennsylvania, USA.Search for more papers by this author, and Karen B. DeSalvoGoogle Health, Palo Alto, California, USA.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:5 Oct 2020https://doi.org/10.1089/pop.2020.29001.nasAboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 23Issue 5Oct 2020 InformationCopyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersTo cite this article:Moderator: David B. Nash, Participants: Mark D. Smith, Anand K. Parekh, Byron C. Scott, Kavita Patel, Karen Murphy, and Karen B. DeSalvo.Reflections on a Post-COVID World: Lessons from the Surge.Population Health Management.Oct 2020.386-392.http://doi.org/10.1089/pop.2020.29001.nasPublished in Volume: 23 Issue 5: October 5, 2020Online Ahead of Print:August 24, 2020PDF download

BACKGROUNDYoung 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.AIMSThis pilot study investigated whether a focused curricular intervention could improve university students' ability to make sound judgements of credibility.SAMPLEParticipants (n = 67) were students in four sections of a 'critical thinking and writing' course at a university on the West Coast of the United States. Course sections were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 29) and control conditions (n = 38).METHODSWe conducted a pre-and-posttest, treatment/control experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 design (treatment condition × order × time) with repeated measures on the last factor. Students in the treatment group received two 75-min lessons on evaluating the credibility of online content. An assessment of online reasoning was administered to students 6 weeks prior to the intervention and again 5 weeks after.RESULTSStudents in the treatment group were significantly more likely than students in the control group to have shown gains from pretest to posttest.CONCLUSIONSResults suggest that teaching students a small number of flexible heuristics that can be applied across digital contexts can improve their evaluation of online sources.

This article reports a validity study of History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), which are short, constructed-response assessments of historical thinking. In particular, this study focuses on aspects of cognitive validity, which is an examination of whether assessments tap the intended constructs. Think-aloud interviews with 26 high school students were used to examine the thinking elicited by 8 HATs and multiple-choice versions of these tasks. Results showed that although both HATs and multiple-choice items tapped historical thinking processes, HATs better reflected student proficiency in historical thinking than their multiple-choice counterparts. Item format also influenced the thinking elicited, with multiple-choice items eliciting more instances of construct-irrelevant reasoning than the constructed-response versions. Implications for history assessment are discussed.

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. This pilot study investigated whether a focused curricular intervention could improve university students’ ability to make sound judgements of credibility. Participants ( n  =   67) were students in four sections of a ‘critical thinking and writing’ course at a university on the West Coast of the United States. Course sections were randomly assigned to treatment ( n  =   29) and control conditions ( n  =   38). We conducted a pre-and-posttest, treatment/control experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 design (treatment condition × order × time) with repeated measures on the last factor. Students in the treatment group received two 75-min lessons on evaluating the credibility of online content. An assessment of online reasoning was administered to students 6 weeks prior to the intervention and again 5 weeks after. Students in the treatment group were significantly more likely than students in the control group to have shown gains from pretest to posttest. Results suggest that teaching students a small number of flexible heuristics that can be applied across digital contexts can improve their evaluation of online sources.

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 assess the credibility of individual websites. However, the checklist approach is outdated. It would be far better to teach young people to follow the lead of professional fact-checkers: When confronted by a new and unfamiliar website, they begin by looking elsewhere on the web, searching for any information that might shed light on who created the site in question and for what purpose.

To be an informed citizen in today's information-rich environment, individuals must be able to evaluate information they encounter on the Internet. However, teachers currently have limited options if they want to assess students' evaluations of digital content. In response, we created a range of short tasks that assess students' civic online reasoning-the ability to effectively search for, evaluate, and verify social and political information online. Assessments ranged from paper-and-pencil tasks to open Internet search tasks delivered via Google Forms. We outline a process of assessment development in which middle school, high school, and college students in 12 states completed tasks. We present a series of representative tasks and analyses of trends in student performance. Across tasks and grade levels, students struggled to effectively evaluate online claims, sources, and evidence. These results point to a need for curriculum materials that support students' development of civic online reasoning competencies.

Since the 2016 presidential election, worries about our ability to evaluate online content have elicited much hand wringing. As a Forbes headline cautioned, "Americans Believe They Can Detect Fake News. Studies Show They Can't." Our own research doubtless contributed to the collective anxiety. As part of ongoing work at the Stanford History Education Group, we created dozens of assessments to gauge middle school, high school, and college students' ability to evaluate online content. In November 2016, we released a report summarizing trends in the 7,804 student responses we collected across 12 states. At all grade levels, students struggled to make even the most basic evaluations. Middle school students could not distinguish between news articles and sponsored content. High school students were unable to identify verified social media accounts. Even college students could not determine the organization behind a supposedly non-partisan website. In short, we found young people ill equipped to make sense of the information that floods their phones, tablets, and laptops.