Fake news is an intentionally fabricated news article that is verifiably false, and which could mislead the audience (Tandoc, et al, 2018). The World Economic Forum (2013) ranked the spread of misinformation as one of the top risks facing the world today. The “fake news pandemic” (Rajan, 2020) impacts public views on topics as varied as climate change and vaccines reducing the perceived seriousness of these issues and undermining both science and society (Lewandowsky, et al., 2017; van der Linden, et al. 2017). Fake news spreads six times faster online than the truth and therefore can reach more people quicker (Vosoughi, et al., 2018). Furthermore, people believe in fake news around 75% of the time (Silveman & Singer-Vine, 2016), meaning that many millions of people may have been fooled by fake news (Allcot & Gentzkow, 2017). Indeed, YouGov (2017) found that while many people believe they can tell the difference between real and fake news, only 4% of those surveyed could systematically differentiate the two. People across Europe are concerned about misinformation in their information environment (Hameleers, Brosius, De Vreese, 2021). Furthermore, fake news impacts not only people’s views but also their behaviour. Gunther and colleagues (2018) found that fake news affected how individuals voted during the 2016 USA elections. Therefore, it is vital that we take steps to develop people’s confidence and skills in recognising fake news and that we help young people to develop these skills early.

Whilst great strides are being made in the fight against online misinformation, much of the research on fake news is focused on adults and less is known about young people. This is a notable blind spot as many young people seek out their news via social media; around 54% say they get their news from social media (Common Sense Media, 2019). Young people report using social media as a source of news because they find traditional news boring and difficult to understand (Marchi, 2012). However, social media is notorious for spreading fake news, for example, Facebook leads to referrals to untrustworthy news sources over 15% of the time compared to authoritative news sources 6% of the time (Guess, Niham & Reifler, 2020). As more than 71% of adolescents have a social media profile (Ofcom, 2019) and more than 60% of 12-15-year-olds report that they do not think about the credibility of news stories when on social media (Ofcom, 2018), it has been suggested that digital media literacy should be a pillar of education (Select Committee on Communications, 2017). In fact, the Commission on Fake News and Critical Literacy in Schools, National Literacy Trust (2018) found that only 2% of young people had the skills needed to ascertain whether news was true and 60% reported that they trusted news less because of fake news. Furthermore, Herrero-Diz et al., (2020) found that young people cared less about the accuracy of news than its novelty or uniqueness and may not realise the damaging effect of sharing fake news. Thus, it is vital to increase young people’s awareness, confidence and skills to help them recognise fake news online.

Therefore, we co-created a fake news intervention ‘Project Real’, in collaboration with young people and influencers, alongside support from teachers. We hypothesised that participating in Project Real would lead participants to:

H1: become more confident in their ability to recognise fake news.

H2: show increased ability to recognise fake news. 

H3: intend to make more checks about news stories before sharing them. 

Participants One hundred and twenty-six participants completed both the pre and post-test, 13 (aged 11), 45 (age 12) and 68 (age 13). Seventy-five were female, 42 were male, and 3 were nonbinary, six preferred not to state their gender. Seventy-three were White, 28 were Asian or Asian British, 10 were Black, 11 were Mixed or from multiple ethnic groups, and 4 were from other ethnic groups. Participants for the focus groups were 27 pupils from two schools. Five teachers from two schools participated in the interviews. Two had engaged in the co-creation and three had not. Materials Intervention co-creation Pupils and teachers from three schools in Glasgow, social media influencers and academics co-created the intervention. Each school group discussed fake news and developed general ideas about what topics should be covered in the project and the format it should take. They created hour-long sessions with Powerpoint slides, short videos from the influencers and interactive activities. The topics were fake news, fake people, fake photos, fake stories (conspiracies) fake videos and finally keeping it real (where participants developed materials to teach other young people about fake news). Pre- and post- questionnaire To understand young people’s use of social media to access news, we asked what websites they used for news. There were options such as Youtube and Instagram, as well as space to give their own answer or to state they did not use social media for news. To examine how confident participants were in identifying fake news, we asked participants to answer three questions including: “Generally speaking, how confident do you feel in identifying fake news?” To examine participants’ ability to identify fake news, we took a task from Maertens et al., (2021). Participants were shown 4 news headlines in the format of a ‘Tweet’ and asked how accurate and trustworthy the news was, how confident they were in this belief and whether they would share it. We then asked participants what checks they would make before sharing a news story to ascertain their current behavioural practices. This was answered by selecting options such as “check if it was a trustworthy website”. Focus groups and interviews Semi-structured interview schedules were developed for teachers and pupils, which included questions about whether and how Project Real had impacted their behaviours and confidence in recognising fake news, for example “Did Project Real help you to feel more confident in recognising fake news?”.

After completing Project Real, participants rated themselves more confident in recognising fake news (H1). They also intended to make more checks on news before sharing it (H3). However, their ability to recognise fake news did not significantly improve (H2). Qualitative data from teachers and pupils indicated that Project Real subjectively increased their confidence in recognising and their awareness of fake news. They also valued that the project had been co-created with young people and influencers. Our findings show that Project Real increased participants’ confidence in recognising fake news and intentions to make more checks before sharing news. This builds on previous research, which suggests that analytical thinking (Pennycook & Rand, 2020) and warnings about fake news (e.g., Ecker et al., 2010) can make people less likely to share misinformation. However, Project Real did not increase participants’ ability to recognise fake news. One potential reason for this was a measurement issue, as participants could not do any checks before responding to the questionnaire. The intervention was built around using a checklist to help participants identify fake news, but our measure did not allow them to do this. Had we allowed participants to make checks before giving their answers or asked what their behavioural intentions were, we may have found improvements in their ability to recognise fake news. Indeed, we found that they intended to make more of these checks before sharing news after the intervention. In the last 10 months, the Project Real website had been visited by 33,000 users and 15% of those visitors have downloaded all resources. While most users have been in the UK, there has been interest internationally including in Ukraine. Therefore, those considering the development of similar interventions may also want to utilise co-creation to maximise their reach and impact.

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