PhD Bacha-Trams Mareike

News evaluation, peer feedback and critical thinking in adolescents

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Nelivuotinen

Fake news are shared widely among humans, particularly in modern social media. Although mechanisms such as novelty seeking, alert for potential dangers or the need to belong have been suggested as potential target points to trigger news propagation, the underlying psychological and neurocognitive processes are not yet fully understood. In this project, we aim at combining neuroscience with education to study social group interactions of news sharing. Using neurocognitive methods of brain imaging as well as behavioural measures, we will investigate how news are evaluated by the brains of adolescents, how news evaluation is influenced by the group and which measures could be taken to prevent fake news from spreading. Findings of the experimental studies will be transferred to classroom teaching, with developing a teaching concept to increase students’ knowledge on verifying information, recognizing fake news and developing strategies to stop them. The project makes a significant novel contribution in combining sciences and humanities in an interdisciplinary manner to help understand the neural mechanisms of naturalistic social group interaction on information sharing. Furthermore, this project will show a societal impact in 1) revealing neuronal and behavioural correlates of information sharing, 2) develop strategies to make knowledge exchange more efficient 3) prevent fake news from spreading and 4) educate students on critical thinking.