Differential Effects of Digital Media Literacy Interventions: An Experimental Comparison of General Warnings, Verification Skills, and Social Correction Strategies

Digital media literacy interventions are a promising solution for building resilience to deceptive digital content. However, while existing research on digital media literacy interventions implicitly treats them as standardized, these interventions vary considerably in the specific skills and concepts they teach. The specific skills taught may significantly impact intervention outcomes, but past research has rarely compared differential effects of them. In this study, we compare three distinct types of digital media literacy interventions: general warnings about misinformation, verification skills to assess content veracity, and guidance on engaging in social correction. Within verification skills, we further distinguish two strategies: focusing on cues within the content itself (e.g., unusual formatting) and consulting outside sources (e.g., lateral reading, reverse image search). In a pre-registered online experiment (N = 1,336), we tested five digital literacy interventions across these three approaches. Our findings show that, while all interventions improved actual knowledge of digital literacy concepts, teaching verification skills, particularly strategies involving consulting external sources, led to significantly better discernment between true and false news and increased use of these skills compared to the control, general warnings, and social correction. Verification based on content cues increased skepticism toward both true and false news, while consulting external sources achieved the ideal effect, boosting trust in true news and reducing belief in false news. Although social correction did not increase the intention to correct misinformation shared by others, it increased the likelihood of sharing true news. These findings provide valuable insights for designing scalable digital literacy interventions.