Countering Misinformation Early: A Grassroots Media Literacy RCT in India

• In Event: Misinformation and Marginalization

Abstract

While misinformation is now recognized as a leading global concern, it portends a stronger and more immediate crisis for developing and emerging economies with lower digital literacy, new access to the internet, and informal networks of information sharing (Blair et al. 2023). In such contexts, traditional misinformation countermeasures – typically, one-shot, online interventions with subtle priming treatments targeted at English-speaking populations -- may not be sufficient.

These perceived limitations have led to the development of a different, more sustained type of intervention. In recent years, governments, NGOs, and civil society organizations have started to provide media and information literacy initiatives to the public, both in the Global North and in the Global South. For example, the state of New Jersey is expected to pass a bill that requires teaching media literacy to children as early as kindergarten. Similar efforts have flourished across African and South Asia. However, empirical evidence that estimates the causal effects of such media literacy training on outcomes at scale is so far lacking.

In this study, we hope to remedy this gap and provide robust evidence on the ability of media literacy training programs to affect information processing on a whole range of outcomes. We thus ask: can sustained and long-term media literacy training help citizens become better consumers of information? To answer this question, we implement a randomized controlled trial in 600 villages across 32 districts of the Indian state of Bihar. With about one of five people in the world living in India and one of two in developing countries, India is a particularly important case. Bihar is the third most populous state in India, with over 127 million people.

Our intervention is a pedagogical, in-person treatment focusing on school-going adolescents in grades 8 to 12 (ages 13 to 18). Treatment group respondents receive four classroom training sessions over a period of three months. We offer these classes in collaboration with the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS), an autonomous body under the Department of Rural Development in the state of Bihar. The aim of the program is to create awareness about health misinformation and provide concrete skills and tools to counter misinformation in the real world, including learning about human psychological biases, the creation and spread of misinformation, and techniques to find and trust credible sources. The program ultimately aims to influence a wide range of attitudes and behaviors related to information processing, vaccine uptake, and health information. Our treatment engages 14,000 adolescents in classroom discussions on these topics across nearly 600 villages and 32 districts in Bihar. We created a custom curriculum for this RCT, drawing on best practices and findings from the misinformation literature, and hired and trained specialized teachers to deliver our curriculum in 600 villages. Control group respondents receive an analogous government course on conversational English. At the end of the intervention, we measure a range of key outcomes such as accuracy and sharing discernment, health attitudes, engagement with misinformation efforts, and behavioral measures. We expect our RCT to increase discernment of misinformation, increase critical thinking and trust in science, decrease reliance on alternative medicine, and improve engagement with civic counter-misinformation measures. We also expect these effects to persist over time and to spillover within households to parents of treated children.

Our project features several innovations. First, we focus on a rural population that remains largely deprived of internet access. Second, we undertake a project of large scale and impact. Collaborating with the BRLPS, we are able to offer classes in our intervention certificate courses, thereby increasing the legitimacy, acceptance, and reach of our program. Third, our intervention is not a one-shot training. We evaluate the effect of a four-session class, dispensed over a period of three months, to test whether sustained instruction builds resistance against misinformation. Finally, and most crucially, our study focuses on adolescents aged 13 to 18. Misinformation studies consistently demonstrate that a factor limiting the effectiveness of treatments is motivated reasoning (Taber and Lodge 2006). This is especially crucial in the Indian case where strong partisans can be resistant to corrective information. We argue that targeting adolescents may overcome these issues as adolescence is a time when attitudes and behaviors may be more malleable (Niemi and Jennings 1991).

Data collection for this study is currently ongoing and we expect to have a full set of findings by April 2024.

Authors

• Sumitra Badrinathan, American University

• Priyadarshi Amar, University of Wisconsin Madison

• Simon Chauchard, University Carlos 3 of Madrid

• Florian Sichart, Princeton University