Students Evaluating and Corroborating Digital News

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.