A Quasi Experiment on the Effectiveness of Social Media Literacy Skills Training for Combating Fake News Proliferation

Abstract

This study experimented the effect of social media literacy skills training as an intervention strategy for combating fake news. We carried out a quasi-experiment in one public university in Nigeria and randomly divided 480 participants into equal parts to form a control and experimental group. The respondents in the experimental group were exposed to 8 weeks of training to improve their social media literacy skills to fight fake news. We realised that social media literacy skills training is effective in increasing social media knowledge, users’ recognition of fake news, their tendency to verify information, and reduce the inclination to share false news since users exposed to social media literacy training can differentiate between accurate and made-up news compared to their counterparts who were not exposed to the same training. Implications for research and practice were discussed.