Recognizing fake news : A comparison between Ethiopian and Swedish students

Abstract: Ethiopia and Sweden are two countries that do not feature together often, but they both face increasing problems with fake news. This thesis is researching whether the similarities between individuals from these countries are greater than the differences between the nations. Meaningful differences in attitudes to media and how to tell fake from fact might indicate that media literacy education has to focus on different aspects, depending on the country. A total of 20 respondents from Ethiopia and Sweden were interviewed about their social media use and what methods they employ and signs they look for in order to separate trustworthy news stories online from fake news. They also played two mission from the game Reality Check, in order to test their ability and learn about more methods for fact-checking. Indications of several important similarities between the groups were found. Both share the same major weakness with respondents from previous research, and exhibit similar biases. The groups differ from each other in some regards, particularly how they prefer to find additional sources. The findings of this study agrees with previous research that people who depend less of reliable sources, and rather trust their own or their friends' ability to tell fake from fact generally perform worse. Confirmation bias is identified as a threat to the respondents' fact-checking ability. The study concludes by recommending that more attention be paid to confirmation bias in media literacy education, and how educators can be informed by the indications of differences between the groups that were found by this study.