Abstract
ABSTRACT In a time of blurring lines between online content, early adolescents’ (12–15 years old) lack of critical engagement with news is problematic. Therefore, we need more effective interventions to empower their news literacy. Interventions should go beyond only informing on the news production process and focus on individual’s news literacy application in everyday life. This study tests an intervention based on (news) media literacy and motivational theory, inspired by the needs and preferences of early adolescents themselves, to stimulate news literacy elements (news literacy self-efficacy, value for media literacy, motivation, and social norms) and news literacy application (news consumption, news analysis, and news evaluation). The intervention consists of three lessons in which early adolescents (N = 258) learn about the news production process, combined with a learning-by-doing approach: writing and checking news articles. Based on a between-subjects waitlist experiment, the intervention was effective in increasing participants’ news literacy self-efficacy, but not (yet) in stimulating other news literacy elements and news literacy application. Nevertheless, this experiment offers valuable insights on the development of news literacy interventions.
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