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Civic literacy and disinformation in democracies
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 169 70 Solna, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8727-2233
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science. Department of Political Science, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1856-9097
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 169 70 Solna, Sweden.
2024 (English)In: Social Sciences, E-ISSN 2076-0760, Vol. 13, no 8, article id 405Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The aim of this study is to explore civic literacy as an approach to counter disinformationin democracies. From group interviews, we elicit, categorize, and analyze diverse perspectives ondisinformation in Sweden, previously upheld as a country with high civic literacy levels. We focuson people’s understandings of disinformation, their assessment of their own abilities to discern disinformation, and their ideas about how increased resilience to disinformation could be achieved. Ourfindings, based on input from 73 interviewees across Sweden, suggest that shared basic knowledgeon disinformation is lacking. Moreover, there is a related weak understanding of what constitutesauthentic information. Those with low awareness operate on a logic of beliefs, implying that measuresto improve factuality and objectivity could not even be aspired for. Still, there are also constituentsshowing advanced understandings. The majority of respondents call for new measures to strengthencitizen knowledge and skills and generate many proposals to that end. Our results indicate thatcitizen competence needs to increase considerably to keep up with the rapidly evolving disinformation environment. A concerted drive to boost citizen knowledge and skills, tailored to differentconstituencies, is needed for the democratic system to work as intended.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2024. Vol. 13, no 8, article id 405
Keywords [en]
disinformation, fake news, civic literacy, democracy, Sweden
National Category
Social Sciences Media and Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-228213DOI: 10.3390/socsci13080405ISI: 001307575300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85202487122OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-228213DiVA, id: diva2:1886890
Funder
The Research Council of Norway, 326210
Note

Correction: 

Lilja, Jannie, Niklas Eklund, and Ester Tottie. 2024. "Correction: Lilja et al. (2024). Civic Literacy and Disinformation in Democracies. Social Sciences 13: 405" Social Sciences 13, no. 9: 471. DOI: 10.3390/socsci13090471

Available from: 2024-08-05 Created: 2024-08-05 Last updated: 2026-01-26Bibliographically approved

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