Information Literacy and Its Effects on Spotting Misinformation

Introduction

Nowadays, we are witnessing a lot of advances in information technology and we are in contact with this advanced world every day in our workplace, school or everyday life. Access to and use of information or information literacy is very important, which refers to the ability to correctly identify information sources, access them, and use the target purposefully.

Since currently information is mostly transmitted through virtual social networks, these networks are most similar to human society and the individual is able to communicate with a large number of other people (Katz & Aspden, 1997), regardless of temporal, spatial, political, cultural and economic limitations (Kraut et al., 2002); therefore, there is a close relationship between information literacy and social networks. Individuals are able to get a lot of information by joining a virtual social network. Transmitting information through virtual social networks is a normal thing and a large amount of correct and incorrect information is published daily through these communication channels between people with different levels of literacy.

Every day more and more unfiltered information is seen that people are skeptical about to ensure their credibility and should be able to use a tool to ensure. The issue of accuracy of information published and reproduced in virtual social networks is seriously questioned. Therefore, users in virtual social networks must be able to distinguish correct information from incorrect information, which, if not done, will impair the process of sending correct information to others. Today, the importance of information literacy is not hidden from anyone, so without it, it is not possible to find the right way through the huge amount of information and reach the destination. In addition to measuring the level of skill in users, the effects that are accompanied by the increasing transfer of information via these networks in society should be considered.

In this study, in order to better compare and more accurately investigate the effect of information literacy on the accuracy of information of social network users, according to the questionnaire, respondents have a general difference in publishing / republishing messages that divide them into two groups of one and two. Group one is the users who have not paid attention to the accuracy of the messages on social networks and have attempted to publish or republish the message, regardless of its accuracy, and group two are users who have paid attention to the accuracy of the messages and have published or they did not republish the message without considering its accuracy. It is possible to produce content on social networks, without any restrictions for different people with any kind of education and specialization. The important thing is to be able to understand these specific goals and intentions of people in the meantime.

It is very difficult for us to recognize and understand these messages in networks, so that it confuses users in order to accept the accuracy of this information, that is, people must be able to distinguish the correct information from the multitude of messages. Many of the messages that are circulated daily by social media users are a kind of rumor and are sent and broadcast for specific purposes, or at best it can be stated that they are false and are published without knowing their accuracy.

The following are the hypotheses of this research:

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  Hypothesis 1: There is a significant relationship between the accuracy of information published by social network users who publish or republish news without regard to the reliability and accuracy of information and their information literacy.

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  Hypothesis 2: There is a significant relationship between the accuracy of information published by users of social networks who do not publish or republish news regardless of the reliability and accuracy of information of social networks and their information literacy.

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  Hypothesis 3: There is a significant direct relationship between the level of information literacy and the level of education of virtual social network users.