Critical Digital Literacy: EFL Students’ Ability to Evaluate Online Sources
Keywords:
critical literacy, digital information, pre-service teachers, reading, EFL learners
Abstract
The advancement of Internet-based technologies and the new media ecology have contributed to the increased reliance on online sources in both the academic and the non-academic contexts. This study investigated how students evaluated the credibility of online information and the bias that might have influenced the content of the information. 152 EFL students responded to the online critical literacy assessment, which consisted of six tasks: evaluating the credibility of visual information, evaluating WhatsApp message, comparing and evaluating websites, distinguishing between news and sponsored content, evaluating the credibility of claim in a YouTube video, and evaluating an Instagram post. The results of the study showed that the students were easily deceived by the online information they read from various online media. They particularly struggled to detect the unsubstantiated claims from the YouTube video. Despite being a generation Z who frequently used social media and various online sources in their daily lives, the students could not critically evaluate the claims posted on these platforms. Implications of this study include the need to incorporate critical digital literacy in the language skill courses and deliberate exposure to strategies in evaluating online sources.
References
Aimah, S., & Purwanto, B. (2019). The use of teachers’ questioning strategies to stimulate students’ critical literacy: A case of two English lecturers in Indonesia. Indonesian EFL Journal, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.25134/ieflj.v5i1.1608
Allington, D., Duffy, B., Wessely, S., Dhavan, N., & Rubin, J. (2020). Health-protective behaviour, social media usage, and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172000224X
Alvermann, D. E. (2017). Social Media Texts and Critical Inquiry in a Post-Factual Era. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 61(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.694
Baildon, M., & Baildon, R. (2012). Evaluating Online Sources: Helping Students Determine Trustworthiness, Readability, and Usefulness. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 24(4).
Beach, R., Boggs, G., Castek, J., Damico, J., Panos, A., Spellman, R., & Wilson, N. (2020). Fostering Preservice and In-Service ELA Teachers’ Digital Practices for Addressing Climate Change. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE Journal), 20(1).
Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2019). Students’ civic online reasoning: A national portrait. Stanford History Education Group & Gibson Consulting, November.
Brennen, J. S., Simon, F., Howard, P. N., & Nielsen, R. K. (2020). Types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Chaka, C. (2019). Re-imagining literacies and literacies pedagogy in the context of semiotechnologies. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 14(1–2). https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN.1891-943X-2019-01-02-05
Damico, J. S., & Baildon, M. (2011). Content literacy for the 21st century: Excavation, elevation, and relational cosmopolitanism in the classroom. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.00028
Damico, J. S., Panos, A., & Baildon, M. (2018). “I’m not in the truth businessâ€: the politics of climate change with pre-service teachers. English Teaching, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0081
Gustine, G. G. (2013). Designing and Implementing a Critical Literacy-based Approach in an Indonesian EFL Secondary School. International Journal of Indonesian Studies, 1(2001).
Hargittai, E., Fullerton, L., Menchen-Trevino, E., & Thomas, K. Y. (2010). Trust online: Young adults’ evaluation of web content. International Journal of Communication, 4, 468–494.
Head, A. J., DeFrain, E., Fister, B., & MacMillan, M. (2019). Across the great divide: How today’s college students engage with news. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i8.10166
Herrero-Diz, P., Conde-Jiménez, J., & Reyes de Cózar, S. (2020). Teens’ Motivations to Spread Fake News on WhatsApp. Social Media and Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120942879
Hobbs, R. (2010). Copyright clarity: How fair use supports digital learning. In Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452219530
Ilahi, H. N. (2019). Women and Hoax News Processing on WhatsApp. Jurnal Ilmu Sosial Dan Ilmu Politik, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.22146/jsp.31865
Kalogeropoulos, A., Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2019). News brand attribution in distributed environments: Do people know where they get their news? New Media and Society, 21(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818801313
Khairunissa, K. (2020). University Students’ Ability in Evaluating Fake News on Social Media. Record and Library Journal, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.20473/rlj.v6-i2.2020.136-145
Krause, N. M., Freiling, I., Beets, B., & Brossard, D. (2020). Fact-checking as risk communication: the multi-layered risk of misinformation in times of COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7–8). https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1756385
Lee, N. M. (2018). Fake news, phishing, and fraud: a call for research on digital media literacy education beyond the classroom. Communication Education, 67(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2018.1503313
Leeder, C. (2019). How college students evaluate and share “fake news†stories. Library and Information Science Research, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.100967
Li, H. O.-Y., Bailey, A., Huynh, D., & Chan, J. (2020). YouTube as a source of information on COVID-19: a pandemic of misinformation? BMJ Global Health, 5(5). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002604
Lovari, A. (2020). Spreading (Dis)Trust: Covid-19 Misinformation and Government Intervention in Italy. Media and Communication, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i2.3219
Lovelace, B. (2020, April 24). FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported. Https://Www.Cnbc.Com/2020/04/24/Fda-Issueswarnings-on-Chloroquine-and-Hydroxychloroquineafter-Serious-Poisoning-and-Death-Reported.Html.
MacFarquhar. (2016). A powerful Russian weapon: The spread of false stories. The New York Times.
Marchal, N., & Au, H. (2020). “Coronavirus EXPLAINEDâ€: YouTube, COVID-19, and the Socio-Technical Mediation of Expertise. Social Media + Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120948158
Mbau, A. T., & Sugeng, B. (2019). Critical Literacy for ELT in Indonesia: What EFL Teachers should be Aware of. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v4i2.255
McDowell, Z. J., & Vetter, M. A. (2020). It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia’s Community and Policies for Information Literacy. Social Media and Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120937309
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning. Theory and Research in Social Education, 46(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320
McGrew, S., & Byrne, V. L. (2020). Who Is behind this? Preparing high school students to evaluate online content. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2020.1795956
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Zwarun, L. (2003). College student Web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers and Education, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(03)00049-6
Nagle, J. (2018). Twitter, cyber-violence, and the need for a critical social media literacy in teacher education: A review of the literature. In Teaching and Teacher Education (Vol. 76). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.08.014
Newman, N. . F. R. . S. A. . A. S. . & N. R. K. (2020). Reuters Institute Digital News Report. Https://Www.Digitalnewsreport.Org.
Nicas, B. J. (2018). How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners. Wall Street Journal.
Nygren, T., & Guath, M. (2019). Swedish teenagers’ difficulties and abilities to determine digital news credibility. Nordicom Review, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0002
Nygren, T., & Guath, M. (2021). Students Evaluating and Corroborating Digital News. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1897876
Office of Communication. (2016). The changing face of online news. Https://Www.Ofcom.Org.Uk/_data/Assets/Pdf_file/0022/115915/Scrolling-News.Pdf.
Potter, J., & Gilje, Ø. (2015). Curation as a new literacy practice. In E-Learning and Digital Media (Vol. 12, Issue 2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753014568150
Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory news consumer: How internet and cell phone users have turned news into a social experience. Pew Research Center.
Roser, M. . R. H. . and O.-O. E. (2015). Internet. Https://Ourworldindata.Org/Internet.
Rusydiyah, E. F., Purwati, E., & Prabowo, A. (2020). How to use digital literacy as a learning resource for teacher candidates in Indonesia. Cakrawala Pendidikan, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.21831/cp.v39i2.30551
Schaeffer, K. (2020). Nearly three-in-ten American believe Covid-19 was made in a lab. Https://Www.Pewresearch.Org/Fact-Tank/2020/04/08/Nearly-Three-in-Ten-Americans-Believe-Covid-19-Was-Made-in-a-Lab/.
Setyaningsih, E. (2019). Bringing critical literacy into tertiary EFL reading class. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v9i2.20220
Silvhiany, S. (2019). Critical Digital Literacies in Education 4 . 0 : Preparing Students for the Uncertainties of Post-Truth World. LINGUA, 19(2), 102–109. https://ejournal.unsri.ac.id/index.php/lingua/article/view/11092/5251
Silvhiany, S., Huzaifah, S., & Ismet. (2021). Developing Online Critical Literacy Assessment for EFL Learners. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201230.134
Stefanone, M. A., Vollmer, M., & Covert, J. M. (2019, July 19). In News We Trust? Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Social Media and Society. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328529.3328554
Sundar, S. S. (2008). The MAIN model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility. Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. https://doi.org/10.1162/dmal.9780262562324.073
Who.int. (2021). managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting- healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation. Who.Int.
Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11).
Allington, D., Duffy, B., Wessely, S., Dhavan, N., & Rubin, J. (2020). Health-protective behaviour, social media usage, and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172000224X
Alvermann, D. E. (2017). Social Media Texts and Critical Inquiry in a Post-Factual Era. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 61(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.694
Baildon, M., & Baildon, R. (2012). Evaluating Online Sources: Helping Students Determine Trustworthiness, Readability, and Usefulness. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 24(4).
Beach, R., Boggs, G., Castek, J., Damico, J., Panos, A., Spellman, R., & Wilson, N. (2020). Fostering Preservice and In-Service ELA Teachers’ Digital Practices for Addressing Climate Change. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE Journal), 20(1).
Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2019). Students’ civic online reasoning: A national portrait. Stanford History Education Group & Gibson Consulting, November.
Brennen, J. S., Simon, F., Howard, P. N., & Nielsen, R. K. (2020). Types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Chaka, C. (2019). Re-imagining literacies and literacies pedagogy in the context of semiotechnologies. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 14(1–2). https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN.1891-943X-2019-01-02-05
Damico, J. S., & Baildon, M. (2011). Content literacy for the 21st century: Excavation, elevation, and relational cosmopolitanism in the classroom. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.00028
Damico, J. S., Panos, A., & Baildon, M. (2018). “I’m not in the truth businessâ€: the politics of climate change with pre-service teachers. English Teaching, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2017-0081
Gustine, G. G. (2013). Designing and Implementing a Critical Literacy-based Approach in an Indonesian EFL Secondary School. International Journal of Indonesian Studies, 1(2001).
Hargittai, E., Fullerton, L., Menchen-Trevino, E., & Thomas, K. Y. (2010). Trust online: Young adults’ evaluation of web content. International Journal of Communication, 4, 468–494.
Head, A. J., DeFrain, E., Fister, B., & MacMillan, M. (2019). Across the great divide: How today’s college students engage with news. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i8.10166
Herrero-Diz, P., Conde-Jiménez, J., & Reyes de Cózar, S. (2020). Teens’ Motivations to Spread Fake News on WhatsApp. Social Media and Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120942879
Hobbs, R. (2010). Copyright clarity: How fair use supports digital learning. In Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452219530
Ilahi, H. N. (2019). Women and Hoax News Processing on WhatsApp. Jurnal Ilmu Sosial Dan Ilmu Politik, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.22146/jsp.31865
Kalogeropoulos, A., Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2019). News brand attribution in distributed environments: Do people know where they get their news? New Media and Society, 21(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818801313
Khairunissa, K. (2020). University Students’ Ability in Evaluating Fake News on Social Media. Record and Library Journal, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.20473/rlj.v6-i2.2020.136-145
Krause, N. M., Freiling, I., Beets, B., & Brossard, D. (2020). Fact-checking as risk communication: the multi-layered risk of misinformation in times of COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7–8). https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1756385
Lee, N. M. (2018). Fake news, phishing, and fraud: a call for research on digital media literacy education beyond the classroom. Communication Education, 67(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2018.1503313
Leeder, C. (2019). How college students evaluate and share “fake news†stories. Library and Information Science Research, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.100967
Li, H. O.-Y., Bailey, A., Huynh, D., & Chan, J. (2020). YouTube as a source of information on COVID-19: a pandemic of misinformation? BMJ Global Health, 5(5). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002604
Lovari, A. (2020). Spreading (Dis)Trust: Covid-19 Misinformation and Government Intervention in Italy. Media and Communication, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i2.3219
Lovelace, B. (2020, April 24). FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after deaths and poisonings reported. Https://Www.Cnbc.Com/2020/04/24/Fda-Issueswarnings-on-Chloroquine-and-Hydroxychloroquineafter-Serious-Poisoning-and-Death-Reported.Html.
MacFarquhar. (2016). A powerful Russian weapon: The spread of false stories. The New York Times.
Marchal, N., & Au, H. (2020). “Coronavirus EXPLAINEDâ€: YouTube, COVID-19, and the Socio-Technical Mediation of Expertise. Social Media + Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120948158
Mbau, A. T., & Sugeng, B. (2019). Critical Literacy for ELT in Indonesia: What EFL Teachers should be Aware of. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v4i2.255
McDowell, Z. J., & Vetter, M. A. (2020). It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia’s Community and Policies for Information Literacy. Social Media and Society, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120937309
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning. Theory and Research in Social Education, 46(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320
McGrew, S., & Byrne, V. L. (2020). Who Is behind this? Preparing high school students to evaluate online content. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2020.1795956
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Zwarun, L. (2003). College student Web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers and Education, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(03)00049-6
Nagle, J. (2018). Twitter, cyber-violence, and the need for a critical social media literacy in teacher education: A review of the literature. In Teaching and Teacher Education (Vol. 76). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.08.014
Newman, N. . F. R. . S. A. . A. S. . & N. R. K. (2020). Reuters Institute Digital News Report. Https://Www.Digitalnewsreport.Org.
Nicas, B. J. (2018). How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners. Wall Street Journal.
Nygren, T., & Guath, M. (2019). Swedish teenagers’ difficulties and abilities to determine digital news credibility. Nordicom Review, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0002
Nygren, T., & Guath, M. (2021). Students Evaluating and Corroborating Digital News. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1897876
Office of Communication. (2016). The changing face of online news. Https://Www.Ofcom.Org.Uk/_data/Assets/Pdf_file/0022/115915/Scrolling-News.Pdf.
Potter, J., & Gilje, Ø. (2015). Curation as a new literacy practice. In E-Learning and Digital Media (Vol. 12, Issue 2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753014568150
Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory news consumer: How internet and cell phone users have turned news into a social experience. Pew Research Center.
Roser, M. . R. H. . and O.-O. E. (2015). Internet. Https://Ourworldindata.Org/Internet.
Rusydiyah, E. F., Purwati, E., & Prabowo, A. (2020). How to use digital literacy as a learning resource for teacher candidates in Indonesia. Cakrawala Pendidikan, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.21831/cp.v39i2.30551
Schaeffer, K. (2020). Nearly three-in-ten American believe Covid-19 was made in a lab. Https://Www.Pewresearch.Org/Fact-Tank/2020/04/08/Nearly-Three-in-Ten-Americans-Believe-Covid-19-Was-Made-in-a-Lab/.
Setyaningsih, E. (2019). Bringing critical literacy into tertiary EFL reading class. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v9i2.20220
Silvhiany, S. (2019). Critical Digital Literacies in Education 4 . 0 : Preparing Students for the Uncertainties of Post-Truth World. LINGUA, 19(2), 102–109. https://ejournal.unsri.ac.id/index.php/lingua/article/view/11092/5251
Silvhiany, S., Huzaifah, S., & Ismet. (2021). Developing Online Critical Literacy Assessment for EFL Learners. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201230.134
Stefanone, M. A., Vollmer, M., & Covert, J. M. (2019, July 19). In News We Trust? Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Social Media and Society. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328529.3328554
Sundar, S. S. (2008). The MAIN model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility. Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. https://doi.org/10.1162/dmal.9780262562324.073
Who.int. (2021). managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting- healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation. Who.Int.
Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11).
Published
2021-05-19
How to Cite
Silvhiany, S., Huzaifah, S., & Ismet, I. (2021). Critical Digital Literacy: EFL Students’ Ability to Evaluate Online Sources. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 6(1), 249-269. https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefl.v6i1.364
Section
Articles
