AUTHOR=Guath Mona , Nygren Thomas 

TITLE=Civic Online Reasoning Among Adults: An Empirical Evaluation of a Prescriptive Theory and Its Correlates

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Education

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.721731

DOI=10.3389/feduc.2022.721731

ISSN=2504-284X

ABSTRACT=Today, the skill to read digital news in constructive ways is a pivotal part of informed citizenship. A large part of the research on digital literacy is dedicated to adolescents not adults, in this study we address this research gap. We investigated 1222 Swedish adults’ abilities to determine the credibility of false, biased and credible digital news in relation to their background, education, attitudes and self-reported skills. Ability was operationalised as the three components in the prescriptive theory of civic online reasoning (McGrew et al. 2017; 2018). Results from a combined survey and performance test showed that the ability to determine the credibility of digital news is associated with higher education, educational orientation in humanities/arts, natural sciences and technology, incidence of sourcing at work and appreciation of credible news. A SEM-analysis confirmed that the items used to assess the different skills tapped into the theoretical constructs of civic online reasoning, and that civic online reasoning was associated with a majority of the predictors in the analyses of the separate skills. The results provide unique evidence for a prescriptive theory of the skills needed to navigate online.