Online media literacy intervention in Indonesia reduces misinformation sharing intention

Abstract

Media literacy is widely viewed as an important tool in the fight against the spread of misinformation online. However, efforts to boost media literacy have primarily focused on Western-media and Western-oriented social media platforms, which are substantively different from the media and platforms used widely in the Global South. In this work, we focus on the media ecosystem of Indonesia and report the results of an online media literacy intervention consisting of short videos that were targeted specifically to social media users in Indonesia ( N = 656). We found that participants in our media literacy intervention were 64% more likely to reduce their sharing intentions of false headlines than our control group ( p < 0.001). Our novel media literacy intervention shows promise as a useful tool to reduce misinformation in Southeast Asia.