While an increasing body of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) literature has been examining false information on social media through its spread, correction, or enabling affordances, less attention has been paid to how false information becomes meaningful within the mundane, situated flows of everyday life. This article presents a phenomenological study of young adults’ experiences with false information across X, Instagram, and YouTube. By examining the lifeworld dimensions of embodiment, sociality, spatiality, and temporality, we demonstrate how sense-making and credibility judgments emerge from relational encounters, habitual patterns, platform-specific expectations, and accumulated past experiences. Our findings expand the current state of CSCW research by redefining false information as a lived, relational, and evolving phenomenon shaped by everyday social and technological practices. We argue that media literacy should be viewed as an experiential and dynamic process influenced by the temporal, spatial, and social contexts of digital environments and discuss implications for the design of technology for improving both individual and collaborative sense-making in regard to false information.
Riazi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.