Empowering students: a campaign to combat fake news through literacy education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28918/erudita.v5i2.12762Abstract
Fake news has become widely consumed by society in all circles, dealing with the intentions and dangers. This study investigates how students identify fake news and educate the community on its circulation. This study employed a qualitative approach and a descriptive qualitative design. It investigated the fake news found, how to identify it, and how to educate others about fake news. This study recruited sixty-four participants, comprising students who had been educated on the characteristics of fake news and critical reading skills. To collect the data, this study used a questionnaire and interviews. The identification of fake news included several steps, which depend on the character and form of the news itself. These steps began with identifying the image or appearance of the news itself and then examining the sentence patterns used by the news to persuade readers to believe it. In addition, they were also willing and able to educate other people not to believe fake news easily. They took several steps, including educating people on how to identify the date of publication and checking the source. This study provided practical information about the steps involved in identifying and educating people about the widespread dissemination of fake news.
Keywords:
References
Aïmeur, E., Amri, S., & Brassard, G. (2023). Fake news, disinformation and misinformation in social media: A review. Social Network Analysis and Mining. 13(30). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01028-5
Al Zou’Bi, R. M. (2022). The impact of media and information literacy on students’ acquisition of the skills needed to detect fake news. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 14(2), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2022-14-2-5
Ali, M., Harun, M. Y., Kasim, F. M., & Mursalin, M. (2021). The role of literacy education in preventing the impact of fake news on government policies and socio-political stability. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Studies, 3(6), 397. https://doi.org/10.29103/ijevs.v3i6.6520
Andersen, K., Bjarnøe, C., Albæk, E., & De Vreese, C. H. (2016). How news type matters: Indirect effects of media use on political participation through knowledge and efficacy. Journal of Media Psychology, 28(3), 111–122. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000201
Brodsky, J. E., Brooks, P. J., Scimeca, D., Todorova, R., Galati, P., Batson, M., Grosso, R., Matthews, M., Miller, V., & Caulfield, M. (2021). Improving college students’ fact-checking strategies through lateral reading instruction in a general education civics course. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00291-4
Burkhardt, J. M. . (2017). Combating fake news in the digital age. ALA TechSource.
Cheung, S. K., Dulay, K. M., Yang, x., Mohseni, F., & Mcbride, C. (2021). Home literacy and numeracy environments in Asia. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.578764
De Paor, S., & Heravi, B. (2020). Information literacy and fake news: How the field of librarianship can help combat the epidemic of fake news. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 46(5). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102218
Fakhriyah, F., Masfuah, S., Roysa, M., Rusilowati, A., & Rahayu, E. S. (2017). Student’s science literacy in the aspect of content science? Jurnal Pendidikan IPA Indonesia, 6(1), 81−87. https://doi.org/10.15294/jpii.v6i1.7245
Fardiah, D., Rinawati, R., Darmawan, F., Abdul, R., & Lucky, K. (2020). Media literacy for dissemination anticipated fake news on social media. Mediator: Jurnal Komunikasi, 13(2), 278–289. https://doi.org/10.29313/mediator.v13i2.6624
Fauzan, Eriyanti, R. W., & Asih, R. A. (2023). Misconception of reading literacy and its impacts on literacy acculturation in school. Cakrawala Pendidikan, 42(1), 208−219. https://doi.org/10.21831/cp.v42i1.53041
Fortus, D., Lin, J., Neumann, K., & Sadler, T. D. (2022). The role of affect in science literacy for all. International Journal of Science Education, 44(4), 535−555. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2022.2036384
Garg, N., & Singh, S. (2018). Financial literacy among youth. International Journal of Social Economics. 45(1), 173−186. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-11-2016-0303
Halimatussa’diyah, Firdausi Nuzula, & Wahyunengsih. (2022). Analysis of the journalistic language characteristics of Hermawan Arifianto on Liputan6.com. ALINEA : Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra Dan Pengajarannya, 2(3), 409–419. https://doi.org/10.58218/alinea.v2i3.319
Hall, S., & Liebenberg, L. (2024). Qualitative description as an introductory method to qualitative research for Master’s-level students and research trainees. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 23, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241242264
Id, T. B. (2020). Why do people spread false information online ? The effects of message and viewer characteristics on self-reported likelihood of sharing social media disinformation. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239666
IFLA. (2017, March). How to spot fake news. https://repository.ifla.org/items/c5dbfa34-7d00-47ac-8057-0183a5056438
Ilis, E. (2024). The rise of fake news in the social media era. JCDS: Journal of Communication and Development Studies, 9(10), 42–54. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382366055_The_Rise_of_Fake_News_in_the_Social_Media_Era
Iswara, A. A., & Bisena, K. A. (2020). Manipulation and persuasion through language features in fake news. RETORIKA: Jurnal Ilmu Bahasa, 6(1), 26–32. https://doi.org/10.22225/jr.6.1.1338.26-32
Iswara, H. S., Ahmadi, F., & Ary, D. Da. (2022). Numeracy literacy skills of elementary school students through ethnomathematics-based problem solving. Interdisciplinary Social Studies, 2(2), 1604–1616. https://doi.org/10.55324/iss.v2i2.316
Jannana, N. S., Prabowo, T. T., & Istriyani, R. (2021). Identifying fake news : A lesson from library science students. 9(1), 39–49. https://doi.org/10.24252/v9i1a5
Khairunissa, K. (2020). University students’ ability in evaluating fake news on social media. Record and Library Journal, 6(2), 136–148. https://doi.org/10.20473/rlj.V6-I2.2020.136-145
Lamot, K., Kreutz, T., & Opgenhaffen, M. (2022). “We rewrote this title”: How news headlines are remediated on facebook and how this affects engagement. Social Media + Society, 8(3), 205630512211148. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221114827
Lan, X., & Yu, Z. (2023). A Bibliometric review study on reading literacy over fourteen years. Education Sciences, 13(1), 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010027
Lestari, L. S., & Ramadan, Z. H. (2023). The effectiveness of cultural literacy and citizenship through staging creativity against global diversity characters of elementary school students. Jurnal Pendidikan dan Pengajaran, 56(2), 287–298. https://doi.org/10.23887/jpp.v56i2.65922
Machete, P., & Turpin, M. (2020). The use of critical thinking to identify fake news: A systematic literature review. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics): Vol. 12067 LNCS. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45002-1_20
Mastel. (2017). Hasil survey Mastel tentang wabah hoax nasional [Results of Mastel's survey on the national hoaxes]. https://mastel.id/hasil-survey-wabah-hoax-nasional-2019/.
Narwal, B. (2018). Fake news in digital media. Proceedings of 2018 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN) (pp. 977–981). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACCCN.2018.8748586
Ishida, Y., & Kuraya, S. (2018). Fake news and its credibility evaluation by dynamic relational networks : A bottom up approach. Procedia Computer Science, 126, 2228–2237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.07.226
Novaes, C. D., & de Ridder, J. (2021). Is fake news old news?. The Epistemology of Fake News, 156–179. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863977.003.0008
Pathak, B., & Patel, K. (2020). Combating fake news through digital media literacy: Study on digital media users of bhopal city of India. International Journal on Transformations of Media, Journalism & Mass Communication, 5(2), 49–65. https://management.eurekajournals.com/index.php/IJTMJMC/article/view/471
Peterson, E., & Allamong, M. B. (2022). The Influence of unknown media on public opinion: Evidence from local and foreign news sources. American Political Science Review, 116(2), 719–733. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421001234
Purwatiningsih, S. D., & Lubis, M. R. (2024). The impact of credibility of the news source detik.com on the confidence of Tama Jagakarsa students' university in the accuracy of news reports. International Journal of Social Science and Human Research. 7(02), 1099–1110. https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v7-i02-28
Rahmadhany, A., Aldila Safitri, A., & Irwansyah, I. (2021). Fenomena penyebaran hoax dan hate speech pada media sosial [The phenomenon of hoaxes and hate speech on social media]. Jurnal Teknologi dan Sistem Informasi Bisnis, 3(1), 30–43. https://doi.org/10.47233/jteksis.v3i1.182
Dianah, L., & Tetep. (2024). Media literacy and the prevention of fake news among students. Jurnal Pendidikan Progresif, 14(1), 1372–1381. https://doi.org/10.23960/jpp.v14.i1.20244
Shara, A. M., Andriani, D., Ningsih, A. W., & Shinoda, K. (2020). Correlating reading literacy and writing literacy in junior high school Pematangsiantar. Journal of English Education, 5(2), 72–85. https://doi.org/10.31327/jee.v5i2.1249
Spyridou, L. P. (2019). Analyzing the active audience: Reluctant, reactive, fearful, or lazy? Forms and motives of participation in mainstream journalism. Journalism, 20(6), 827–847. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918784733
Tell, N. J. J. (2023). Beyond literacy : Enhancing gerakan literasi. Proceedings of International Conference of Public Administration (pp. 1–11). https://conference.undana.ac.id/semintadm/article/view/550
Tinmaz, H., Lee, Y. T., Fanea-Ivanovici, M., & Baber, H. (2022). A systematic review on digital literacy. Smart Learning Environments, 9(21). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-022-00204-y
Valencia-Arias, A., Arango-Botero, D. M., Cardona-Acevedo, S., Paredes Delgado, S. S., & Gallegos, A. (2023). Understanding the spread of fake news: An approach from the perspective of young people. Informatics, 10(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics10020038
Wahyuni, N., Andra, V., & Friantary, H. (2022). An analysis of language styles used in the daily newspaper of Radar Selatan. Jadila: Journal of Development and Innovation in Language and Literature Education, 2(4), 479–490. https://doi.org/10.52690/jadila.v2i4.245
Zaryan, S. (2017). Truth and trust: How audiences are making sense of fake news [Master’s thesis, Lund University]. Lund University Publications. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/8906886
Downloads
Published
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Eros Meilina Sofa, Ahmad Burhanuddin, Mislina

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Erudita: Journal of English Language Teaching is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. An author who publishes in Erudita: Journal of English Language Teaching agrees to the following terms:
- Author retains the copyright and grants the journal the right of first publication of the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal
- Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book) with the acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Author is permitted and encouraged to post his/her work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of the published work (See The Effect of Open Access).








