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About the Project
Misinformation can harm democratic processes, social cohesion and public health outcomes.
While a range of approaches are needed to address misinformation, media literacy is recognised as an essential component of any comprehensive national strategy for combatting misinformation.
This 3-year project brings together leading Australian media literacy researchers with four national public cultural institutions to produce high-quality and diverse opportunities to improve adult media literacy in Australia.
Media literacy is the ability to apply critical thinking to digital and non-digital media through analysis, evaluation, and reflection. Increasing people's media knowledge and skills alongside their capacity for critical thinking in relation to their media use increases their ability to detect and avoid misinformation.
However, our research shows that most adult Australians don’t believe they can identify misinformation online and there is an uneven distribution of media abilities across different sociodemographic groups.
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Until now, there has been limited research into how Australian citizens respond to potentially harmful misinformation encountered online, or how media literacy interventions can be designed to assist them. This project addressed this research gap to respond to the harms caused by misinformation.
We used a mixed-methods research approach to explore the everyday experience of misinformation and to assess media literacy needs in the Australian context. Each research activity included the same pool of respondents, providing a unique and rich dataset. The research activities have included:
- National Media Literacy Survey. Our nationally representative survey of 4,422 Australians adults was designed to understand their media practices, attitudes and confidence in their abilities. Analysis of respondents socioeconomic and cultural data allowed us to identify the media literacy, experiences needs and interests of different population groups.
- National Information Verification Test. This involved an activity‑based test of 2,115 of the survey respondents to assess their abilities to verify information online from different sources, such as websites and social media platforms.
- Diary Study. 55 participants documented their encounters with online news and information over the course of 1 week and reflected on how they decided what was trustworthy and what was not.
- Interviews. Semi‑structured interviews with 20 participants explored how sociocultural dynamics influence people’s information‑seeking and decision‑making behaviours.
- Learning Design Events. Bi-annual immersive partner workshops guided the research and supported industry partners to develop evidence-informed media literacy initiatives.
- A Guide for Media Literacy Action. Developed with our industry partners, this Guide will support the work of government agencies, civil society organisations, community groups and broader public cultural institutions who want to use media literacy to address the problem of misinformation. (To be launched with our Book, Living with Misinformation: A Media Literacy Approach October 28, 2026)
Funding
This research project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project LP220100208).
Period: 2023 - 2026.
Partner organisations
