Disinformation Literacy: Undergraduate Students' Perspectives on Emergent Skills and Implications for Disinformation Pedagogy

This course impact study explores students' views on the importance of Disinformation Literacy (DL) at the undergraduate level at a Canadian university, the challenges of developing DL, and the best approach to develop it. Two surveys were administered during a Disinformation and Media course in a Communication Department: the first focused on eliciting the cohorts' viewpoints on DL, and the second focused on the impact of the course on their prior views on disinformation in media. Findings shed light on the change in participants' conceptual understanding of disinformation as they challenge their pre-existing perceptions through investigating real-life disinformation cases of their choice. Students developed disinformation detection competencies, using fact-finding tools mapped out over a series of scaffolded assignments. We recommend giving DL pedagogy importance in the undergraduate curricula by considering it a co-literacy of, rather than a sub-literacy, subject matter, or theme within, ML and MIL.