Psychosocial Processes and Human Desire: An Inconvenient Truth about Online Misinformation

Much has been written about the potential civic ramifications of online misinformation, and scholars have identified many useful strategies for helping students discern fact from fiction on social media. However, those strategies make an assumption, which is that consumers of digital media have a desire to identify and share accurate information. In this article, I argue that media literacy efforts should also require students to be retrospective and grapple with their own motivations and biases that may make them more susceptible to believing inaccurate or misleading information. Drawing on theories from political psychology, namely motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, as well as psychosocial research that explains the role of affect on individuals' decision-making, I identify implications for K-12 media literacy education.