Boosting teenagers’ skills to fact-check photos and problems of overconfidence: Impact and side effects in education against misinformation from Ukraine

In this study, we test an intervention to support Swedish school students’ abilities to fact-check visual (mis)information from the war in Ukraine and out-of-context images. We designed a digital intervention for teachers to use in classrooms comprised of three parts: (1) a teacher-led introduction about the war in Ukraine with a short video about misinformation linked to the war, (2) student activities with short video instructions to support students lateral reading, reverse image search, and hands-on online exercises where students investigated if the presented material contained misinformation, and (3) a teacher-led discussion with a review of the correct answers. The intervention was informed by conversations with teachers about countering misinformation through education and previous successful classroom interventions, and 192 students aged 15-19 participated. In a pretest and posttest design, we used a survey with a mix of test items and open-ended questions. We found that the intervention significantly impacted students’ use of digital tools, knowledge, and skills to identify the original time of capture and location of photos from the war and out-of-context photos. Students with adequate skills became more reflective about their knowledge and skills, while some poor-performing students became overconfident. Our findings highlight how educational interventions must be empirically evaluated to safeguard against unwanted impacts on students. Media literacy interventions should consider how the instructional design affects overconfidence in students with limited knowledge and skills. We highlight the importance of identifying these individuals and mitigating overconfidence in the classroom.