But wait that’s not real. Co-creating interventions to help young people spot online misinformation By Yvonne Skipper (University of Glasgow)

Fake news spreads six times faster than the truth (Science, 2018), is believed around 75% of the time (Silveman & Singer-Vine, 2016) and only 4% of us can systematically differentiate between real and fake news. It impacts our beliefs and behaviours and has influenced results of national elections and proved deadly during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is therefore vital to equip young people with the skills to recognise fake news. Most of the existing interventions have been developed for adults and those aimed at youth have been designed for them, not with them. Therefore, our goal was to co-create an intervention for young people, ‘Project Real’, in collaboration with teachers, pupils, influencers and academics. We then tested its’ efficacy.

Pupils and teachers from schools in Glasgow, social media influencers and academics co-created the intervention. This co-creation took place online. In the talk I will discuss how we effectively co-created the intervention online. To evaluate the efficacy, pupils completed questionnaires and focus groups exploring their confidence and ability to recognise fake news before and after the project. Teachers completed interviews to explore their perceptions of the project.

Results suggested that participants became more confident in their ability to recognise fake news and made more checks before sharing news. Pupils enjoyed the intervention and felt that it had helped them develop their skills. Teachers found it easy to use and could see the positive impact on their pupils. This suggests that co-created interventions can increase pupils’ confidence, and skills in recognising fake news.

Materials developed are freely available at our project website www.projectreal.co.uk. In this presentation I will discuss how we can develop materials and projects to increase learners’ skills in recognising fake news.