COVID-19 Social Media Infodemic: The New Media Literacy Level and the Ability to Recognize Fake News Among Cebu City Young Adults

Abstract

The downside of the integrative aspect of the digital space is how easily fake news can propagate which jeopardized the regulation and control measures of the COVID-19 pandemic. While existing literature expounds on the nature of infodemic phenomenon, recent curiosities lack the exploration of the contributing factors that led to the inability to recognize fake news on social media as it corresponds to the New Media Literacy (NML) levels. NML allows adaptation to technological advancement as it constantly evolves with great sophistication. Anchored from this gap, the study employs a quantitative research design where 385 respondents from Cebu City—a highly urbanized city in the Philippines—were asked to answer a three-part survey questionnaire. The findings purport that a high percentage of respondents can distinguish legitimate from fake news and take proactive measures in reporting or resharing the posts. Moreover, the study reveals that the respondents have high NML levels, particularly in functional prosuming and consuming aspects, which the study probed according to the demographic factors. The salient discussion then revolves around the low critical outcomes of prosuming and consuming NML aspects to push for educational policy formulation methods with interpretive social-scientific approaches. This reinforces the post-truth lens in expanding the fields of concerns arising from the infodemic phenomenon. Furthermore, recommendatory measures are provided in the Philippine educational system— that may be reintegrated into the dimensions of policy theories for educational policy evaluation to probe different areas of improvement in the Media and Information Literacy of the K-12 curriculum. Keywords: COVID-19, fake news, infodemic, new media literacy, post-truths