Abstract
This chapter attempts to identify the adaptive capacities of young adults dealing with misleading information about Covid-19 on social media platforms and how they were able to maintain detecting misleading posts about Covid-19. Therefore, this chapter was keen to survey 204 individuals to find out how young people could deal with misleading information on social media platforms and the tools they use to verify information, considering their new media literacy and the rate of their usage of social media platforms, as they are important variables in creating an analytical critical mindset. Results indicated that the presence of a high level of new media literacy among the sample contributed greatly to their knowledge and use of tools for verifying information on social media platforms, and there was a positive correlation between the rate of usage of social media platforms and two-dimensions of new media literacy: functional prosumption and critical prosumption.
TopBackground
During the covid-19 pandemic, we have faced a lot of false information whether its misinformation, disinformation, fake news, rumors, etc. Wu& Morstatter (2019) tried to differentiate between several terms, and they explained that “misinformation as an umbrella term to include all false or inaccurate information that is spread in social media”, and that disinformation, fake news, rumors, troll, spam, and urban legend are key terms to misinformation (p.1).
Wardle& Derakhshan (2017) submitted a new conceptual framework for talking about information disorder, including three types: misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, where they pointed out that Dis-information is “the information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country”. While misinformation means “information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm” and finally Mal information which is “information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization or country” (p.20).
Studies concerned with the concept of misinformation have attempted to identify the motives behind its propagation and if people used to publish it, intentionally or not, in addition to the blind reasons that can lead to the spread of the same phenomenon. Several studies have related it to the concept of media literacy, especially among young people and on social media platforms. The current studies during the period of covid-19 pandemic - tried to identify the extent of the phenomenon of misinformation about the virus-some of which have already caused deaths or wrong handling of the situation.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Literacy: It is digital communication skills which everybody needs it now to deal with the society where digital technologies are increasing day by day.
Social Media Platforms: Online interactive applications or websites through which users can create and share content and connect with other users such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger, TikTok.
Information Literacy: The ability to navigate and locate information.
New media Literacy: Skills and knowledge about internet terms and social media platforms, encompasses the practices that allow people to detect accurate information, know how to consume, produce, evaluate, and analyze online content.
Media Literacy: The ability to access, analyze, and evaluate media content.
News Literacy: Understand the role that news plays in society accompanied with an ability to recognize, and critically evaluate news.
Prosumption: It is a term proposed by Chen and Wang (2018) AU119: The in-text citation "Chen and Wang (2018)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. mixing between two words “producer” and “consumer” to measure two dimensions of new media literacy “Functional Prosumption” and “Critical Prosumption.”