Fighting Disinformation: How to Measure the Impact of Pre- and Debunking on Dutch Primary School Children’s Media Literacy?

Pascale Verhalle and Eugėne Loos ()
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Pascale Verhalle: Independent Researcher
Eugėne Loos: School of Governance, Utrecht University, 3511 ZC Utrecht, The Netherlands

Societies, 2025, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-12

Abstract: To empower citizens against disinformation in a sustainable way, teaching media literacy is important, especially among young children, enabling them to use this competence throughout their lifetime. Prebunking and debunking are two different teaching methods to enhance media literacy and fight disinformation. Prebunking is a technique based on teaching people to recognize disinformation in advance so that they are aware of it. Debunking is characterized by refuting disinformation after the target group has been exposed to disinformation. To compare their impact, our empirical study conducted an exploratory experiment at two primary schools in the Netherlands in Spring 2024. One group of primary school children (10–13 years old) was exposed to a prebunking intervention (based on inoculation, a psychological approach directed against the disinformation manipulation techniques) while the other group was exposed to a debunking intervention (based on a traditional media literacy lesson). Both groups were questioned about the reliability of digital information (news items) to measure the effectiveness of prebunking compared to debunking. We addressed the following question: To what extent can the impact of pre- and debunking as an educational method for media literacy among Dutch primary school children be measured by an exploratory experiment?

Keywords: disinformation; media literacy; intervention; exploratory experiment; prebunking; debunking; primary school children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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