Mistrust as a precondition for critical thinking and media literacy

Media literacy can help individuals identify misinformation, including content that is deliberately and falsely presented as news. A key yet underexplored component of media literacy is how mistrust acts as a precondition for a critical disposition towards information sources and the claims they make. This study introduces the concept of mistrust within the context of verifying information and explores its relationship to media literacy. We conducted two interlinked online surveys (n = 2,115). The first measured participants’ confidence in their ability to verify information, as well as their experiences with media literacy education. The second survey assessed their actual ability to identify misinformation through a performance-based verification task involving four posts and articles sourced from social media and websites. Our findings indicate that both mistrust and news consumption are associated with participants’ confidence and ability to verify information. However, we observed nuanced differences between perceived confidence and actual verification ability. Mistrust emerged as the strongest predictor of confidence in identifying facts and verifying information. In contrast, actual ability was most strongly linked to online news consumption—regular news consumers were more adept at discerning misinformation. The impact of media literacy education was nuanced. Online media literacy education was positively associated with both confidence and ability, whereas school-based media literacy education primarily boosted confidence. Support from community-based organisations or family and friends, however, showed no significant relationship with either confidence or ability.