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Misinformation around scientific issues is rampant on social media platforms, raising concerns among educators and science communicators. A variety of approaches have been explored to confront this growing threat to science literacy. For example, refutations have been used both proactively as warning labels and in attempts to inoculate against misconceptions, and retroactively to debunk misconceptions and rebut science denialism. Refutations have been used by policy makers and scientists when communicating with the general public, yet little is known about their effectiveness or consequences. Given the interest in refutational approaches, we conducted a comprehensive, pre-registered meta-analysis comparing the effect of refutation texts to non-refutation texts on individuals' misconceptions about scientific information. We selected 71 articles (53 published and 18 unpublished) that described 76 studies, 111 samples, and 294 effect sizes. We also examined 26 moderators. Overall, our findings show a consistent and statistically significant advantage of refutation texts over non-refutation texts in controlled experiments confronting scientific misconceptions. We also found that moderators neither enhanced nor diminished the impact of the refutation texts. We discuss the implications of using refutations in formal and informal science learning contexts and in science communications from three theoretical perspectives.

In October 2022, New Brunswick Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Dominic Cardy publicly resigned and widely disclosed his disappointment with Premier Blaine Higgs' leadership. Using Cardy's unprecedented public resignation letter as a primary source, this paper explores the inner workings of neoliberal governance and privatization in public education and critically analyzes data manipulation, governance shifts, and problematic conservative "hands-offism." Applying a rhizomatic methodological framing and theoretically drawing from Bourdieu and Passeron's (1977) conceptualization of symbolic violence and Gilmore's (2008) notion of "organized abandonment," we argue that neoliberal governance and privatization disproportionately affect vulnerable communities and weaken democratic processes. To understand these complexities, we utilize a rhizomatic analysis, simultaneously considering historical and geographical contexts, governance structures, and political narratives. We conclude that neoliberal governance and privatization are inherently symbolically violent, as they are used in tandem to perpetually defund and dismantle public institutions.

Trainee psychologists, like those completing a postgraduate master's programmes are vulnerable to experiencing impostorism. To help assess this risk and develop intervention strategies, there is a need for a brief validated measure of impostorism. The Leary Impostorism Scale (LIS) is a brief self-report measure that demonstrates satisfactory psychometric properties but has not been validated with trainees undertaking professional psychology training. The current study involves an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the LIS and describes levels of impostorism in a sample of Australian trainee psychologists. Participants were 161 postgraduate students enrolled in their first year of a psychology master's programme. A maximum likelihood (ML) EFA revealed a single factor accounted for 73.67% of total variance. Parallel analysis verified the unidimensional model. A Cronbach's [alpha] of 0.94, was obtained indicating high internal consistency. Overall, the sample scored at 'moderate' levels with 23% having high levels of impostorism. Further research is required to investigate further item reduction of the LIS due to high internal consistency. In addition, to clarifying factors that may account for differences between levels of impostorism between participants in different training programmes, there is a need to develop and assess interventions to reduce the negative effects of impostorism.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the whole world, education in Turkey, as in foreign countries, has been carried out through e-learning and therefore through a screen. This pandemic has been a factor that has increased the time students spend with screens out of the lesson. Since screens have become an essential part of daily life, it is important to distinguish overuse. In this context, it was aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale to determine students' screen addiction levels. Descriptive research model was used in the study. A study group consisting of 490 middle school students studying in Turkey was determined for the research. "Screen Addiction Scale (SAS)" was developed by the researcher to determine the screen addiction of the students. In the preparation of the scale items, eight criteria used to diagnose screen addiction, which were created by Sigman (2017) based on DSM-5 criteria, were utilized. Factor analysis revealed that SAS has a structure with 21 items and 4 factors. The dimensions are as follows: (1) Negative consequences-Compulsive use, (2) Mood regulation, (3) Lying about use, (4) Withdrawal-Loss of interest. A valid and reliable scale was obtained, which was validated by the first-order multifactor model and the second-order multifactor model.

People who hold multiplicistic (multiplist) epistemic beliefs about science tend to believe that scientific knowledge is always subjective and that varying opinions on a scientific matter are equally valid. Research suggests that multiplist epistemic beliefs may be maladaptive and lead to a radically subjective view of science. Little is known about the association between such beliefs and mistrust in science/scientists and the tendency to believe in misinformation. The aims of this study were to examine: (a) the degree to which multiplist epistemic beliefs about science are associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and science-related conspiracy beliefs, (b) the degree to which trust in science mediates the association between multiplist epistemic beliefs about science and conspiracy beliefs, and (c) the extent to which COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and science-related conspiracy beliefs are associated with compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines. Participants were 210 undergraduate students attending a Hispanic-serving institution located in a large city in the southern U.S. Path analysis results indicated that multiplist epistemic beliefs about science were positively associated with science-related conspiracy beliefs after accounting for fundamentalism and conservatism. Moreover, trust in science mediated the positive association between multiplist epistemic beliefs about science and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Finally, belief in COVID-19 conspiracies was negatively associated with COVID-19 prevention guideline compliance.

Identity serves as a valuable lens through which to investigate, understand and facilitate teacher learning during curriculum reform. Identity learning is the core process of educational change, with teacher emotion at the heart of professional learning processes. In this study, we traced the 1-year journeys of four Chinese EFL teachers during a tertiary EFL curriculum reform that focused on ideological and political education. The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity was utilised to understand identity learning. By drawing on interviews, documents and observations, we collected rich data and analysed four types of identity learning along a continuum from fake learning to transformation, mediated by teacher emotion. A multiplicity of emotions acted as indicators and potential catalysts for identity learning. However, an overly demanding context might lead to a retrogressive identity learning trajectory. The integration of ideological and political education in foreign language education was also discussed.

The turn to democracy in South Africa brought hope for a higher education sector that would play a key role in tackling racial inequalities and injustices. However, transformation promises ended up being largely smokescreens for maintaining entrenched racist and capitalist logics rooted in colonialism and apartheid. Instead of focusing on epistemic decolonisation, universities became commodified and commercialised neoliberal enterprises focused on the maintenance of Eurocentric epistemic hegemony. In this conceptual article framed within the decolonial theoretical framework, we critically interrogate how two dominant ideologies -- the Rainbow Nation and neoliberalism -- have sidelined fundamental transformation and epistemic decolonisation in South Africa. Focusing on the Department of Higher Education and Training's "Strategic Plan 2020-2025," we illustrate that decolonisation is not government's priority and that neoliberal visions continue to dominate strategic planning for higher education. We argue that the lack of political will and policy alignment from the government will contribute to the further entrenchment of coloniality, Eurocentricity and neoliberal logics at universities. We conclude with the call for critical engagement with the history of universities and their role in propagating and supporting colonialism and apartheid and argue that progressive scholars and students must continue to organise within South Africa and beyond and work on the radical dismantling of the Eurocentric and neoliberal universities. Contribution: While other scholars have engaged separately with neoliberalism and the Rainbow Nation and their impact on higher education in South Africa, in this article, we bring these two ideologies together to show how they have combined to prevent decolonisation of higher education.

This paper proposes a new information literacy (IL) framework, based around mindfulness, that is suited for the contemporary informational environment. This framework results from a weeklong interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars, theorising and incorporating mindfulness as a significant aspect of healthy information seeking and interpretation. Our framework builds on existing IL frameworks but encourages information consumers to recognise their emotional responses and political biases while providing reminders that information always contains political components. By doing so, this framework updates existing IL guidelines to better reflect the current era of rising polarisation and affective media consumption. We present a mindfulness framework for IL that combines mindfulness practices with critical thinking in addressing the emotional impact of mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories on the current information society.

Academic writing courses are critical in higher education. However, they often rely on directive measures, or "shoves," that impose rigid guidelines, high-stakes assessments, and punitive consequences. These approaches, such as inflexible deadlines and harsh grading penalties, can increase student anxiety, disengagement, and surface learning. As a result, some students resort to unethical strategies, such as using essay mills or AI-generated content. This qualitative study, conducted through interviews with 20 writing professors and 30 students, identified several common shoves in academic writing courses and explored their negative impacts on student engagement and academic integrity. The findings highlight critical areas of concern, including strict rubrics, high-stakes deadlines, standardized feedback, and plagiarism threats. In response, the study proposes a shift from punitive shoves to supportive nudges, categorizing the latter into intuitive and didactic interventions. These nudges, such as automated deadline reminders, scaffolded assignments, and ethical AI usage prompts, aim to foster more positive student behavior and engagement. The next phase of this research will investigate how these behavioral nudges influence learning outcomes and student well-being.

Post-truth strategies are characterized by the manipulation of facts and personal assertions of the truth for political gain. By seeding polarization, skepticism, and mistrust, post-truth presents challenges to teaching and learning within academic settings. In this paper, we explore how post-truth is articulated in higher education literature using a critical pedagogical lens. We suggest that pedagogical scholarship needs to expand its scope beyond a focus on the media antics of individual politicians in order to interrogate the reliance on dominant framings that simply define "post-truth" as circumstances where personal beliefs take precedence over established facts. We argue that the current framing of post-truth shapes the educational response to this issue, which focuses on helping students discern correct from incorrect information, as opposed to teaching students how power and knowledge are intertwined in post-truth and ways to understand and address the subsequent and potentially harmful power relations. Since post-truth strategies are enacted to restrict thoughtful reflection on dominant relations of power, we propose a critical pedagogical framework to problematize the notion of objective truth, account for the politics of exclusion, examine power relations, and contest post-truth strategies.

In light of the increasing frequency of misleading information in social media regarding environmental issues, this study aimed to identify misleading information spread through TikTok videos and to discuss why such content is considered misleading, drawing on relevant literature. Hashtags with large numbers of views, such as #climatechange, #sustainability, #pollution, #biodiversity, #environmentalprotection, #environmentalissues, #energysource, and #environmentalproblems, were used for data collection through web scrapper called Apify (https://apify.com/). A total of 29 misleading videos were found. Content analysis was applied to identify and classify the topics and misleading claims. The topics of misleading videos, according to the most frequent mentions, were energy sources, followed by climate change, pollution, biodiversity, and environmental degradation. Among the misleading claims, videos related to pyramids as nonpollutant power plants and conspiracy related to pollution exhibited the highest frequency. The results show various misleading claims in videos related to environmental topics. Also, emphasized the importance of science education in addressing misleading information. In addition, the importance of an interdisciplinary approach for addressing environmental issues was reinforced.

Cyber threats have escalated in recent years. Many of these threats have been direct and vicious attacks on K-12 systems. Educators are rarely trained on how to address cyber threats from a systemic and educational perspective when such challenges arise in their school buildings. This article explains the cyber threats that are looming large for K-12 systems and provides concrete tools for school leaders to employ in order to provide preventive education to their school communities.

This article provides insights into stakeholders' challenges while bringing educational accountability to private tutoring providers through a self-regulation model. There is no participant involved in this narrative inquiry study. Policymakers may be ambivalent about bringing accountability as their families may benefit from private tutoring. This account is written from the perspective of a teacher-trained tutor who has worked with policymakers to address some of the challenges. This first-person narrative describes the experience of establishing a national peak body to bring greater accountability to private tutoring providers. This peak body is unique because it positions the educational interests of students as at least equal to providers' commercial interests. The author believes that greater accountability for tutoring businesses is required in all markets and that issues will not resolve through self-regulation alone.

The authors discuss how board games offer individuals with autism (who often struggle with social settings and require structured outlets for building relationships) an affordable, naturalistic, collaborative environment that is stimulating, engaging, and educational. Board games, they assert, provide opportunities to practice social skills, including cooperation and social deduction, essential skills for both neurotypical and atypical people. The authors include recommendations for introducing board games into special educational settings.

This literature review examines the significance of Critical Media Literacy (CML) in higher education. The rapid digitalization and globalization have intensified media dissemination, raising critical issues about information authenticity and its societal impacts. CML empowers individuals to critically analyze media, discern between reliable and unreliable sources, recognize biases, and understand the broader socio-political implications of media messages. The study leverages Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding Theory to dissect how media messages are constructed, disseminated, and interpreted, emphasizing the need for critical engagement in the post-truth era. The review highlights the detrimental effects of fake news and disinformation on democracy and trust in institutions, stressing the importance of integrating CML into higher education curricula to foster informed and engaged citizens. The paper also discusses the methodological limitations in current research and the necessity for comprehensive teacher training and systemic changes in educational institutions. Ultimately, this study underscores the transformative potential of CML in developing critical thinking, promoting democratic engagement, combating media manipulation and misinformation, and advocating for its inclusion in education policies and practices to prepare students for the complexities of the digital media landscape. [Note: The page range (14-34) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 14-35.]

As a fundamental communication tool, media has undergone transformative changes throughout history. This has a lot to do with education. Each era has been characterized by its own unique media paradigms, from the invention of the printing press in the 15th century to the emergence of radio and television in the 20th century. These paradigms not only define how information is disseminated but also shape the social and political landscapes of their respective periods. In the modern age, the emergence of digital technology and the internet has brought about a new media paradigm that deeply influences every aspect of human interaction and the fabric of society. Today, new media, characterized by its interactivity, decentralization, and unprecedented access, dominates our daily lives. The significance of new media, which affects individual behaviors and global politics, economy, and cultures, cannot be underestimated. This process is also of great importance in terms of education. In particular, media literacy education will enable the individual to personally prepare for or otherwise intervene in the positive or negative aspects of their interaction with the media. From connecting distant communities to altering the dynamics of political campaigns, the impact of new media is ubiquitous. However, along with these advantages, new challenges have also emerged. One of the most concerning aspects of this shift in media is the potential for its exploitation by malicious groups, particularly evident in the rise of "terror agencies" utilizing new media platforms. These organizations adeptly employ new media tools for propaganda, recruitment, and operations, forming a symbiotic relationship that poses significant threats to global security. This article explores how new media paradigms enable the existence of terrorist organizations, the place of education in this regard, and what this complex relationship means for our interconnected world.

This study aims to reveal school principals' unethical behaviours based on teachers' perceptions within schools, to reveal the causes for these behaviours and recommendations to prevent them. An interpretive qualitative approach was applied. Data were gathered via face-to-face interviews conducted with 17 public school teachers in Kocaeli Province of Turkey. The data was examined through content analysis technique. The participants listed the unethical behaviours of school principals in seven different themes as discrimination, favouritism, violation of the rules of courtesy, misconduct, mobbing and pressure, neglect of duty, and other behaviours. The causes of unethical behaviours of school principals were stated as the factors related to administrative qualifications, personal factors, institutional factors, the factors related to teachers, and environmental factors. To prevent unethical behaviours of school principals, the participants suggested some training activities as post-graduate education in educational administration and psychological guidance to school principals. They also suggested some activities to increase the professional development levels and human relations competences of school principals. It was also recommended to make some legal regulations regarding the appointment, assignment issues, reward, rotation, and supervision of administrators. In addition to these suggestions, it was recommended to organize social activities for preventing unethical behaviours of school principals.

Research indicates that deceitful videos tend to spread rapidly online and influence people's opinions and ideas. Because of this, video misinformation via deepfake video manipulation poses a significant online threat. This study aims to discover what factors can influence viewers' capability to distinguish deepfake videos from genuine video footage. This work focuses on exploring deepfake videos' potential use for deception and misinformation by exploring people's ability to determine whether videos are deepfakes in a survey consisting of deepfake videos and original unedited videos. The participants viewed a set of four videos and were asked to judge whether the videos shown were deepfakes or originals. The survey varied the familiarity that the viewers had with the subjects of the videos. Also, the number of videos shown at one time was manipulated. This survey showed that familiarity with subjects has a statistically significant impact on how well people can determine a deepfake. Notably, however, almost two-thirds of study participants (102 out of 154, or 66.23%) were unable to correctly identify a sequence of just four videos as either genuine or deepfake. This study provides insights into possible considerations for countering disinformation and deception resulting from the misuse of deepfakes.

Indirect indices for faking detection in questionnaires make use of a respondent's deviant or unlikely response pattern over the course of the questionnaire to identify them as a faker. Compared with established direct faking indices (i.e., lying and social desirability scales), indirect indices have at least two advantages: First, they cannot be detected by the test taker. Second, their usage does not require changes to the questionnaire. In the last decades, several such indirect indices have been proposed. However, at present, the researcher's choice between different indirect faking detection indices is guided by relatively little information, especially if conceptually different indices are to be used together. Thus, we examined and compared how well indices of a representative selection of 12 conceptionally different indirect indices perform and how well they perform individually and jointly compared with an established direct faking measure or validity scale. We found that, first, the score on the agreement factor of the Likert-type item response process tree model, the proportion of desirable scale endpoint responses, and the covariance index were the best-performing indirect indices. Second, using indirect indices in combination resulted in comparable and in some cases even better detection rates than when using direct faking measures. Third, some effective indirect indices were only minimally correlated with substantive scales and could therefore be used to partial faking variance from response sets without losing substance. We, therefore, encourage researchers to use indirect indices instead of direct faking measures when they aim to detect faking in their data.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between foreign higher education and corruption in 14 home countries in the MENA region and 13 host countries from 2007 to 2021. Panel-estimated generalized least squares, robust least squares MM estimation, dynamic panel data estimation, and one-step difference generalized method of moments was used to overcome heterogeneity and endogeneity issues and increase robustness. The study adopted the positive grease-the-wheels theory of corruption and the greed or need (GONE) theory in which the need for corruption develops into greed for corruption, revealing a significant positive relationship between foreign higher education and corruption in the MENA countries. Meanwhile, the sand-in-the-wheel theory of corruption and anti-corruption mechanisms that encourage less greed per the GONE theory revealed a significant negative relationship between foreign higher education and corruption in origin countries after students returned to their home countries. The study findings support the idea that foreign knowledge is a blessing for MENA countries. Furthermore, there was a significant positive relationship between foreign higher education and corruption in the host countries because students adapted to the host country's environment. The main conclusion was that governments should encourage students to study abroad in countries with less corruption, supporting the main hypothesis, which posited that ethics and values are adopted abroad and transferred to home countries. Furthermore, constitutional reform and economic development should be adopted to implement the anti-corruption system and control public spending on education.

We present a fictional short story about embezzlement, "Great Experiment" by Jeffrey Eugenides, as a resource for management classes. We begin by providing a brief description of the story, in which a decent and law-abiding 40-something man's lack of professional success and envy of his wealthy neighbors contribute to his decision to accept a coworker's invitation to participate in an embezzlement scheme to steal money from their employer. Then, we discuss how to use the story to prompt students to identify the antecedents and consequences of illegal, unethical behavior and consider ways organizations can prevent such behavior. We also suggest other ways to use this resource.

This study argues that the works of philosopher Jürgen Habermas can provide useful directions for mathematics education research on statistical literacy. Recent studies on the critical demands posed by statistical information in media highlight the importance of the communicative component of statistical literacy, which involves students' ability to react to statistical information. By adapting Habermas' construct of communicative rationality into a framework for statistical literacy, a novel analytical tool is presented that can provide theoretical insights as well as in-depth empirical insights into students' communication about statistical information. Central to the framework are the four validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness which interlocutors need to address to engage in statistical communication. The empirical usefulness of the framework is shown by presenting the results of a study that examined Grade 5 students' responses to fictional arguments about the decline of Arctic sea ice. The Habermas-based framework not only reveals that complex evaluations of statistical arguments can take place even in Grade 5 but also shows that students' evaluations vary greatly. Empirical results include a content-specific differentiation of validity claims through inductively identified sub-categories as well as a description of differences in the students' uses of validity claims.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if feedback related negativity (FRN) can capture instantaneous elevated emotional reactivity in autistic adolescents. A measurement of elevated reactivity could allow clinicians to better support autistic individuals without the need for self-reporting or verbal conveyance. The study investigated reactivity in 46 autistic adolescents (ages 12-21 years) completing the Affective Posner Task which utilizes deceptive feedback to elicit distress presented as frustration. The FRN event-related potential (ERP) served as an instantaneous quantitative neural measurement of emotional reactivity. We compared deceptive and distressing feedback to both truthful but distressing feedback and truthful and non-distressing feedback using the FRN, response times in the successive trial, and Emotion Dysregulation Inventory (EDI) reactivity scores. Results revealed that FRN values were most negative to deceptive feedback as compared to truthful non-distressing feedback. Furthermore, distressing feedback led to faster response times in the successive trial on average. Lastly, participants with higher EDI reactivity scores had more negative FRN values for non-distressing truthful feedback compared to participants with lower reactivity scores. The FRN amplitude showed changes based on both frustration and reactivity. The findings of this investigation support using the FRN to better understand emotion regulation processes for autistic adolescents in future work. Furthermore, the change in FRN based on reactivity suggests the possible need to subgroup autistic adolescents based on reactivity and adjust interventions accordingly.

Media literacy has been gaining traction as a part of higher education curricula to support learning as educational institutions are recognizing the importance of developing students' media literacy skills. However, students' emotional reactions towards media literacy can be vastly different and, in turn, may impact their perception of truth and credibility of mixed media messages. In this study, we explored 68 non-health professions university students' unique emotional profiles towards media literacy. We further examined whether students with different emotional profiles would differ in their credibility ratings (truthfulness, trustworthiness, and believability) of media messages that were drawn from mainstream and fake news sources. We also investigated the relationship between emotion profiles and emotional reactions towards mainstream versus fake news messages. We employed a probabilistic, latent clustering approach, latent profiling analysis (LPA), to generate latent categories of emotion profiles. LPA revealed four distinct emotion profiles that students endorsed: (1) low emotions, (2) moderate emotions, (3) high negative emotions, and (4) high positive emotions towards learning media literacy. Additional findings revealed that students with a low emotional profile tended to rate all media messages as more truthful, trustworthy, and believable than other emotion groups. Moreover, we identified that students in the moderate emotions and high negative emotions group rated fake messages with more positive emotions. This study offers insight towards the significance of understanding how emotions towards media literacy can impact the outcomes of media perception. This is an important step that will encourage educators to develop more engaging media literacy instruction and interventions.

Under 'post-truth' conditions the generation, circulation and status of knowledge are being transformed, with significant implications for institutional trust, social cohesion and public safety. These conditions raise complex challenges and opportunities within education, which plays a potentially pivotal role in supporting communities to respond in an assertive and critical manner. However, little is currently understood about the way key stakeholders within education position themselves epistemically in relation to post-truth conditions. The purpose of this research was to analyse epistemic aspects of educators' responses to post-truth conditions using a 'social lab' methodology, which is a qualitative, action-oriented approach to studying complex social problems. Analysis of data from the social lab, which involved a variety of education stakeholders, identified four epistemic aims (with associated ideals, processes and actions) to orient an educational response to post-truth conditions. However, overall, epistemic aims lacked precision and contextual specificity. Furthermore, aims were associated with divergent underpinning epistemological commitments, mirroring divergences in literature on the educational implications of post-truth conditions. Teachers may require additional training to enhance epistemic reflexivity and drive more productive and inclusive conversations about post-truth in classrooms, staffrooms and ITE programs. The findings are suggestive of the complex epistemological and institutional dynamics that need to be negotiated in educational responses to post-truth conditions.

Recent demographic changes in the United States have shown that we live in a multicultural society. However, for some reason, colleges and universities are still floundering in mediocrity when it comes to multiculturalism. What we see in higher education is multiculturalism that is fraudulent and unaccountable and the fact that individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) and vulnerable backgrounds consistently endure White supremacy, racism, discrimination, and xenophobia, to say the least. In addition, we consistently see that proactive and measurable efforts are not made in the recruitment, retention, graduation, continuation, tenure, and promotion of students, faculty, staff, and leaders from CLD, immigrant, and vulnerable backgrounds. While there are well-written and documented policies, mission and vision statements, and goals and objectives in institutions of higher learning, there appears to be deficits in applicability and accountability measures of equity, diversity, quality, goodness, and fairness. Most strategies seem to be feel-good, look-good, fake, bandaid, and fraudulent approaches that are divorced from realities. How do we reverse these moves while respecting the traditional roles of higher education? This article responds to this critical question.

The manipulated or manufactured truth on social media platforms spreads false information to influence netizens' cognition, often resulting in fabricated social and political narratives. This study systematically reviews the literature on truth manipulation and its impact on the cognition of social media users. The primary focus is on disinformation, misinformation, fake news, and propaganda. The study appraises 162 peer-reviewed publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection database using the systematic review method. The data was put through a bibliometric analysis to unpack the evolutionary nuances of netizens' cognitive response to manufactured truth, informativity, and manipulation on social media. The study highlights emerging trends and issues from truth manipulation on social media. The bibliometric analysis reveals since 2017, there has been an increase in the trend of scholarly work about truth manipulation on social media and its effects on the cognition of netizens. The USA seems to be the most prominent node to contribute to the study of truth manipulation. The content analysis shows multiple aspects causing truth manipulation. This study also seeks ways and methods to prevent and counter truth manipulation on social media. It looks at the possibilities of altering netizens' cognitive abilities by improving their critical social media literacies through fact-checking. The study results show that knowledge gaps persist in truth manipulation on social media and the cognitional aspects in response to fabricated narratives. We emphasize the importance of further investigations in this domain.

The "critical" element present in many critical information literacy (CIL) studies shows a commitment to the practical challenge of the power structures that shape current information regimes. In this article, we argue that it is necessary to analyse how such power structures, organised under a capitalist social order with neoliberal contours, benefit from disinformation, scientific denialism and class, race and gender oppression. In addition to discussing how philosophical notions of language and postmodern relativism appear in the present time, our main theoretical objective is to highlight some thoughts of Hegel, Marx and Bloch on the notions of dialectics, praxis and concrete utopia, aiming to contribute to strengthen the critical element that names and distinguishes CIL as a field of inquiry in library and information studies.

The 21st century has been riven by information challenges, from mis/disinformation campaigns, fake news, and propaganda to online conspiracy theories. At a time when more people are literate than perhaps at any other time in history, we still see the rise and viral global spread of unhinged conspiracy theories across the web. The existence of such crowd-sourced conspiracy theories presents unique challenges for scholars and teachers of information literacy (IL), who face intractable challenges in inculcating healthy information practices. This is especially visible when we compare current IL frameworks with principles espoused within these conspiratorial movements. The online conspiracy theory QAnon demonstrates a particularly thorny problem for IL efforts because QAnon operates according to many of the same principles espoused in literacy frameworks. Since its inception in 2017, QAnon has become one of the most complex online conspiracy theories precisely because it relies on a complex set of informational practices enacted by thousands of followers known as anons. In this article, I argue that internet conspiracies such as QAnon weaponise IL through incitement to "do your own research". I apply a qualitative approach to compare established principles advocated by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to social media posts by Q and his anons to demonstrate the striking similarity in orientation toward questions of authority, context, literacy and research. In my analysis, we need new models for IL to combat conspiracism through a better understanding of the political contours of information ecosystems precisely because these similarities preclude effective engagement, and I conclude by gesturing toward future interventions.

Thurstonian forced-choice modeling is considered to be a powerful new tool to estimate item and person parameters while simultaneously testing the model fit. This assessment approach is associated with the aim of reducing faking and other response tendencies that plague traditional self-report trait assessments. As a result of major recent methodological developments, the estimation of normative trait scores has become possible in addition to the computation of only ipsative scores. This opened up the important possibility of comparisons between individuals with forced-choice assessment procedures. With item response theory (IRT) methods, a multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) format has also been proposed to estimate individual scores. Customarily, items to assess different traits are presented in blocks, often triplets, in applications of the MFC, which is an efficient form of item presentation but also a simplification of the original models. The present study provides a comprehensive review of the present status of Thurstonian forced-choice models and their variants. Critical features of the current models, especially the block models, are identified and discussed. It is concluded that MFC modeling with item blocks is highly problematic and yields biased results. In particular, the often-recommended presentation of blocks with items that are keyed in different directions of a trait proves to be counterproductive considering the goal to reduce response tendencies. The consequences and implications of the highlighted issues are further discussed.

The Fraud Diamond theory (rationalization, opportunity, motivation and perceived capability) has been widely used as a framework to explain criminal behavior. However, little is known about its application in an academic context. Research on the relationship between the prevalence of academic fraud (e.g., cheating on exams, plagiarizing essays) and students' perceptions of the severity of such behaviors is also lacking. We surveyed 1,032 university students and asked them whether they engaged in fraudulent behaviors and how severe they thought these behaviors were. The results showed that motivation, rationalization, and perceived capability dimensions of the Fraud Diamond theory are important factors in predicting the prevalence of students' academic fraudulent behavior, but not opportunity. We also found that the more students reported that they engaged in fraudulent academic behaviors, the less severe they perceived those behaviors to be. However, only rationalization emerged as a predictor of perceived severity. The results suggest that the more students are able to find justifications for their fraudulent behavior, the less severe they perceive those behaviors to be. Rationalization seems to explain, therefore, the tendency to disassociate moral values from dishonest behavior. Taken together, the study shows a vicious cycle between engaging in fraudulent academic behavior and the ability to justify these acts. Implications for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are discussed.

This paper discusses the factors affecting the behaviours for coping with fake news among young people. The data were collected from a survey conducted in late 2019, which sampled 2112 secondary school students from 21 partnering schools. This study aims to understand the opinions and behaviours of teenagers towards disinformation when fake news was prevalent during the anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong. It finds that awareness of the problem alone had limited influence in facilitating coping strategies. Civic awareness and interaction with social media were useful predictors of internal and external coping behaviours, respectively. Confidence about one's ability to detect fake news was a crucial factor, yet a concern for the value of truth stood out as the strongest predictor of fake news coping behaviours.

We examined the efficacy of a Model Statement to detect opinion lies. A total of 93 participants discussed their opinion about the recent strikes on two occasions, 1 week apart. In one interview they told the truth and in the other interview they lied. Each interview consisted of two phases. In Phase 1 they discussed their alleged opinion (truth or lie as appropriate). They then either listened to a Model Statement (a detailed account of someone discussing an opinion about a topic unrelated to strike actions) and expressed their opinion again in Phase 2 (Model Statement present condition) or they discussed their opinion again without listening to a Model Statement (Model Statement absent condition). The verbal cues examined were pro-opinion arguments, anti-opinion arguments, plausibility, immediacy, directness, clarity, and predictability. The truthful statements sounded more plausible in Phases 1 and 2 than the deceptive statements, providing further evidence that plausibility is a strong veracity indicator. The truthful statements included more pro-arguments and sounded more immediate and direct than the deceptive statements, but only in Phase 2. The Model Statement had no effect. Reasons for the Model Statement null-effect are discussed.

People sometimes lie by omitting information. The information lie tellers then report could be entirely truthful. We examined whether the truthful information that lie tellers report in omission lies contains verbal cues indicating that the person is lying. We made a distinction between (i) essential information (events surrounding the omission) and non-essential information (the rest); and (ii) made a distinction between informing or not informing participants about the key event they witnessed. Participants followed a target person. Truth tellers reported all activities truthfully; lie tellers omitted the key event. Participants were or were not informed what this key event was. In the analyses we discarded the information truth tellers reported about the key event lie tellers omitted. Truth tellers reported more external and contextual details, more complications and fewer common knowledge details and self-handicapping strategies than lie tellers, but only when discussing essential information. Being informed had no effect.

Hyper-realistic silicone masks provide a viable route to identity fraud. Over the last decade, more than 40 known criminal acts have been committed by perpetrators using this type of disguise. With the increasing availability and bespoke sophistication of these masks, research must now focus on ways to enhance their detection. In this study, we investigate whether super-recognisers (SRs), people who excel at identity recognition, are more likely to detect this type of fraud, in comparison to typical-recogniser controls. Across three tasks, we examined mask detection rates in the absence of a pre-task prompt (covert task), and again after making participants aware of their use in criminal settings (explicit task). Finally, participants were asked to indicate which aspects of the masks could support their detection (regions of interest task). The findings show an SR advantage for the detection of hyper-realistic masks across the covert and explicit mask detection tasks. In addition, the eye, mouth, and nose regions appear to be particularly indicative of the presence of a mask. The lack of natural skin texture, proportional features, expressiveness, and asymmetry are also salient cues. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.

The current study examined verbal cues of veracity and deception in 911 calls reporting homicides or suicides of another person. Specifically, the current study compared differences in the presence/absence and number of potential verbal indicators between a sample of deceptive callers who concealed their role in causing the person's death and truthful callers who did not cause the person's death. Results demonstrate consistency with previously proposed indicators of veracity and deception in 911 calls. More precisely, a greater number of self-handicapping statements and descriptions of physical sensations were made by deceptive individuals, whereas truthtellers were more likely to spontaneously self-correct inaccurate statements. Practical implications and limitations are discussed.

Social media usage has become a daily habit for the younger generation. It can have positive effects on educational processes, but it also raises concerns about harmful content, such as fake news or hate speech. Fake news is often distributed with the intention to manipulate the public opinion by propagating disinformation. This includes the manipulation of images taken from reputable news resources. In response to these concerns and manipulations, we developed a web-based learning environment with a virtual learning companion (VLC). The VLC is designed to assist students in developing their critical thinking skills while interacting with social media content. The VLC is incorporated into a controlled learning environment that resembles Instagram and contains real and manipulated content. The "Courage" companion communicates with the students through chat dialogue and knowledge-activating questions. It also links additional images from web sources discovered through reverse image search based on image similarity. Learners are provided with various textual descriptions and keywords and are prompted to reflect on this information. The system's effectiveness and assistance in identifying real or manipulated images have been evaluated in an empirical classroom study in August 2022 with 22 high school students in Germany that generated 95 conversations around five images and their texts assisted by the companion. Users' interactions with the companion in a controlled Instagram-like social media environment have been recorded in xAPI format and then analyzed using a research dashboard. The results of this evaluation demonstrate that guidance through the VLC, along with the provision of additional content sources containing similar images and their explanation through the companion, improves the learners' judgment. This corroborates the claim that the tool can help enhance learners' critical thinking, resilience, and sensitivity facing social media issues.

The problem of propagating disinformation (a.k.a. "fake news") on social media has increased significantly in the last few years. There are several initiatives around the world to combat this serious problem. Maybe the most promising ones involve training people to identify "fake news." The use of digital educational games (DEG) to implement such initiatives has presented significant results. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, most of the existing DEG applied to this purpose are designed for English-written News articles, leaving an important gap for news written in other languages, such as Portuguese, for example. Faced with this scenario, this article presents JEDi, a DEG that trains students to identify "fake news" written in Portuguese. JEDi is a version of the known "Trail Game" where the players must traverse the board by correctly distinguishing real from false news. We raise the hypothesis that as the students play JEDi, they develop the ability to recognize disinformation. It is also important to highlight that JEDi collects detailed data from every match in order to provide longitudinal analyses of each player's performance. This paper reports the application of JEDi in three case studies. While the first study involved 43 students from high school, the second and the third were developed with 29 undergraduate and 33 graduate students, respectively. Quantitative and qualitative results obtained in the three studies point to JEDi's effectiveness as a "fake news" detection training instrument. Mining techniques such as association rule mining were employed in data analysis and revealed frequent information that occurred simultaneously in JEDi's database (e.g. some mined association rules showed that even students who considered themselves experts in identifying "fake news" could improve their skills by playing successive rounds of the game).

While empirical studies of research ethics and integrity are increasingly common, few have aimed at national scope, and even fewer at current results from Central and Eastern Europe. This article introduces the results of the first national research integrity survey in Estonia, which included all research-performing organisations in Estonia, was inclusive of all disciplines and all levels of experience. A web-based survey was developed and carried out in Estonia with a call sent to all accredited Estonian research institutions. The results indicate that the vast majority (89%) of respondents consider research ethics and integrity issues important and view falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism (FFPs) as the most severe forms of misconduct. Self-reporting of FFPs is generally comparable to levels published in other studies (6.2%). Gift authorship (41%) and hampering the work of a colleague (32%) were problematic practices most noticed among colleagues. At the same time, two of the noticed questionable research practices (QRPs) - salami-slicing and misuse of research funding -- were seen as less severe, hinting at the existence of counter-norms that career advancement rules and structural factors like funding policies may encourage. The availability of research ethics and integrity guidelines was considered good. Ethical aspects of studying potentially stigmatising data in a very small research community are discussed in the article and results are analysed through counter-norms andc normative dissonance frames.

Machiavellianism is an antisocial interpersonal style involving the use of manipulative, deceptive, and coercive behaviors in the pursuit of self-interest. Although widely studied as a "dark" personality trait in adults, relatively little is known about the developmental correlates of Machiavellian tendencies earlier in life. The present study addressed this knowledge gap by examining associations between Machiavellian behavior and three theoretically relevant social-emotional domains-prosocial emotions, emotion recognition skills, and self-control--in a community sample of 7- and 11-year-old Canadian children (N = 300, 50% female). Of particular interest was the extent to which individual differences in social-emotional capacities were uniquely associated with Machiavellian behavior after controlling for aggression, a relatively well-studied antisocial behavior in childhood. Parents reported on children's Machiavellian behavior and aggression. Social-emotional correlates were assessed via parent and child reports, behavioral tasks, and physiological assessments. Machiavellian behavior and aggression were similarly associated with lower parent-reported prosocial emotions and self-control. Machiavellian (but not aggressive) behavior was associated with lower child-reported guilt (a prosocial emotion), higher resting skin conductance levels (reflecting a general tendency for higher arousal), and better anger recognition. Semipartial correlational analyses indicated that these patterns of association with Machiavellian behaviors held independent of aggression. These findings indicate that, by middle childhood, Machiavellian behavior constitutes a distinct form of antisocial conduct that is associated with a unique social-emotional risk profile.

According to faking models, personality variables and faking are related. Most prominently, people's tendency to try to make an appropriate impression (impression management; IM) and their tendency to adjust the impression they make (self-monitoring; SM) have been suggested to be associated with faking. Nevertheless, empirical findings connecting these personality variables to faking have been contradictory, partly because different studies have given individuals different tests to fake and different faking directions (to fake low vs. high scores). Importantly, whereas past research has focused on faking by examining test scores, recent advances have suggested that the faking process could be better understood by analyzing individuals' responses at the item level (response pattern). Using machine learning (elastic net and random forest regression), we reanalyzed a data set (N = 260) to investigate whether individuals' faked response patterns on extraversion (features; i.e., input variables) could reveal their IM and SM scores. We found that individuals had similar response patterns when they faked, irrespective of their IM scores (excluding the faking of high scores when random forest regression was used). Elastic net and random forest regression converged in revealing that individuals higher on SM differed from individuals lower on SM in how they faked. Thus, response patterns were able to reveal individuals' SM, but not IM. Feature importance analyses showed that whereas some items were faked differently by individuals with higher versus lower SM scores, others were faked similarly. Our results imply that analyses of response patterns offer valuable new insights into the faking process.