‘‘ JAG VET INTE RIKTIGT VAD JAG SKA TRO! ’’. En kvalitativ studie i ungdomars förhållningssätt till desinformation på sociala medier
Abstract
Disinformation, i.e. intentionally false content disseminated with the aim of reaching a
particular group to influence their views on a topic or issue, has become increasingly
common with the rise of digital media and a clear threat to democratic values, according to
research. This thus raises questions about how to prevent disinformation from the impact it
has on different groups and in different contexts. Much research exists on the subject in the
form of studies that measure people’s ability or lack of ability to identify disinformation on
social media. These studies, of both qualitative and quantitative types, often set a focus on
respondents’ confidence in detecting disinformation. However, few studies exist on the topic
of young people and disinformation. In Sweden, there is some research on this topic, but
these studies often focus on the more quantitative aspects of a problem and no studies has so
far highlighted how young people in Sweden relate to disinformation on social media with a
starting point of finding out how they reason about false content on social media and why
they think the way they do; i.e. to understand their lifeworld in relation to this. Thus, this
work has come to be about investigating this with a qualitative method.
The following study has been conducted with eleven in-depth interviews with high school
students from year 1 and year 3. The questions that have been asked have aimed to answer
which social media platforms young people use the most and why, how they reason about
disinformation circulating on these platforms and their confidence in different types of
channels and content. An important aspect has been to present examples from the
internet/social media that border on or by definition can be said to be disinformational
content and discuss this with the students. This has been done to review in what way their
confidence, or lack of such, to identify disinformation resonates with the correspondents
actual ability and competence to understand what is reliable or not. Finally, a comparison has
been made by analyzing if there is a difference in how older students relate to disinformation
on social media compared to the younger students.
The results show that young people generally find it difficult to distinguish between what is
true and what is false on social media unless the source is considered reliable (well-known
newspapers were often cited as an example). Overall, it can be said that there was always
some uncertainty as to whether something could be considered as truthful. When asked how
the respondents find out or determine what is true or false, the answers were somewhat
scattered; gut feeling, cross-checking or prior knowledge became common answers as to how
to make such an assessment. In terms of media literacy, an important distinction was
discovered in that those who had high confidence in their own competence was often able to
explain why and how they make judgements about the reliability of different content, but
when presented with the three examples from the internet/social media containing curiously
misleading information, in some cases these individuals had more difficulty in making a
clearly delineated assessment. However, it must be said that in some cases this was due to a
certain difficulty in understanding some of the concepts used in these contents.
In terms of the comparison made on whether there was a difference in how respondents’
attitudes towards disinformation on social media depending on their age, two main
distinctions were made. The first, in line with the above, was that the younger students had a
greater difficulty with certain concepts, which affected either their view of a certain content
or their ability to determine the truthfulness of said content. The second was that the older
students found it easier to reason aloud about why they determined a piece of content to be
either true or false, i.e., the older students could more easily articulate why something seemed
more or less credible to them. Here, the younger ones explained this more in terms of a
feeling about whether or not something seemed true, but had more difficulty in pinpointing
the characteristics of that feeling.
In summary, it should be said that this study is very much an in-depth study, which means
that the focus has been on the respondents’ feelings, impressions and experiences. It is
therefore difficult to make a major generalization of the results as the information extracted is
so personal on many levels. Having said that, the study has resulted in an up-close analysis of
how young people might reason and thus suggests different aspects and perspectives that can
be useful for future research.
Degree
Student essay
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2024-03-01Author
Kolflaath, Johanna
Keywords
Desinformation, Ungdomar, Mediekompetens, Nyhetsnavigering, Sociala Medier
Series/Report no.
1242
Language
swe