Information literacy and detection of disinformation

The advent of social media and its popularity have brought new ways of interpersonal communication, simplifying and speeding up the communication of information, but at the same time, there has been a faster and more massive spread of disinformation content in the online environment. As disinformation is a current problem affecting the whole of society, it needs to be addressed and dealt with appropriately. Detecting misinformation is seen as a key in this respect, but it is not an easy task, and approaches vary and have their own shortcomings. In addition to the technical approach of the often discussed automated detection of disinformation, there are also approaches focused on manual detection relying on human intervention and manual verification of content as well as education and development of skills of individuals that should help them detect disinformation. Previous research suggests that one approach to addressing the problem of disinformation, may be to develop information literacy skills and competencies; which is the focus of this paper. This thesis presents information literacy as a tool to address the problem of misinformation and examines the relationship between information literacy and misinformation detection. The empirical research is conducted in the form of an online questionnaire survey. Based on the available literature, research questions were established to investigate the impact of information literacy competencies and information literacy as a whole on the ability to detect disinformation. While the testing of the stated hypotheses confirmed the relationship between information literacy and the ability to recognize disinformation, however, it was the opposite of what was expected. No statistically significant effect was demonstrated for the other investigated variables and therefore further investigation is needed.