Combatting the Misinformation Crisis: A Systematic Review of the Literature on Characteristics and Effectiveness of Media Literacy Interventions

Abstract

Due to the prevalence of misinformation in current media environments, there is an urgent need for effective media literacy interventions that broadly protect people from its negative effects. However, such interventions do not always have their desired impact, calling for a better understanding of the factors influencing their efficacy. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on 80 experimental studies, following the PRISMA checklist. Interestingly, findings suggest that intervention effectiveness depended more on the outcome variables targeted than on specific intervention characteristics. Notably, most interventions successfully improved users’ ability to detect misinformation, likely because many were specifically designed with this goal in mind. However, their effects on persuasive outcomes (e.g., attitudes) were more inconsistent, suggesting that changing such outcomes may require different or additional strategies beyond misinformation detection training. Based on these findings we propose several suggestions for future research and recommendations for developing more effective media literacy interventions.