UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ CREDIBILITY ASSESSMENT OF SCIENTIFIC CONTENT ON INSTAGRAM
UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ CREDIBILITY ASSESSMENT OF SCIENTIFIC CONTENT ON INSTAGRAM

Summary/Abstract: Social media are central areas for adolescents’ engagement with science but also environments for misinformation. This challenges adolescents’ ability to assess the credibility of scientific content. So far, little is known about how adolescents assess credibility on social media. Building on empirical studies and frameworks of credibility and combining self-reports, performance data, and written justifications, this study examined how Austrian upper secondary school students (N = 1,055) use social media and how they assess the credibility of scientific Instagram posts. Self-report data were analysed descriptively and via exploratory factor analysis. Written justifications were examined using qualitative content analysis. The students reported limited use of social media for scientific information. 19 self-report items concerning the procedure for assessing credibility clustered into four factors aligned with theoretically grounded credibility perspectives: design, trustworthiness, social validation, and content. When assessing Instagram posts, students often applied one credibility perspective at a time and changed credibility perspectives across posts. The weak alignment between self-reported and actual credibility assessment suggests a reliance on heuristics over systematic reasoning, reducing assessment reliability. These findings highlight challenges for science education, strengthening adolescents’ science media literacy and metacognitive awareness, and for science communication, making credibility cues explicitly visible and interpretable in fast-paced, visually driven environments.

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