Fact-checking as digital media literacy in higher education

Information disorder is a growing phenomenon, and fact-checking has long been recognized as an effective practice to evaluate media. Still, knowledge about fact-checking is not coherent in higher education institutions, not even in the field of media education. The paper is based on a case study exploring the teaching of fact-checking in higher education as evaluation of an intercultural workshop online in the critical-pragmatic framework with mixed methods as partof ERASMUS+ project (2020 -2022) titled as Fact Checking: European cooperation project on disinformation and fact-checking training. The case-based action research was actualized as a workshop online on fact-checking with the title “Information Disorder and Fact-checking” in master level for 10 international exchange students. Mixed methods approach produced rich data for thematic analysis. Key findings focus on students’ learning outcomes, teaching practices and show participant’s challenges in facing unfamiliar media environments in the workshop. Findings highlight a need for developing fact-checking teaching in higher education as digital media literacy in a framework which integrates pragmatic with critical approach as digital design and other hands-on educational practices together with culture-based contextualization. Moreover, the study suggests that contents of digital media literacy need updating with fact-checking and algorithm-based communication for the recognition of technology as a counterpart in the organization of information disorder.