interviews and found a large gap between participants in terms of critical thinking skills.
In this exploratory study, readers will be invited to see the strengths and weaknesses of
adolescents in media news literacy. The results obtained are that in some cases, they tend
to have arguments that are similar to the arguments of the person who argued before
(Bissonette, 2021) so that there is a confirmation bias which is often said to be selective
laziness of reasoning (Nickerson, 1998; Bissonette, 2021). However, overall, they show
skepticism towards news and tend to criticize the online news provided through several
clarifying questions.
While in the journal "Journalism Students and Information Consumption in the Era of
Fake News", research was conducted through a survey with an exploratory perspective
with research participants being journalism students at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona (UAB). This research focuses on the character of Gen Z in consuming news
where Gen Z is an early generation whose life has naturally been in the period of internet
development. But on the other hand, some studies show that this generation is the most
vulnerable to fake news (Wineburg & McGrew, 2016). But in some sub-groups, this
generation plays an important role and is responsible for the future fate of journalism
and professional communication.
The results obtained are 90% of respondents use social networks to get information and
67% prefer to access online newspapers for information consumption. The preferred
channels are politics, events and sports. Meanwhile, in the context of producing news,
43.4% said they first verified the information obtained, 12.3% immediately trusted their
trusted news portal. 7.5% admitted that they did not have time to check the information
again (Tejedor, Portalés-Oliva, Carniel-Bugs, & Cervi, 2021) When participants were
asked to define "fake news", the responses were false facts, lying, manipulating,
confusing, taking advantage, and misleading. They also believed that digital platforms
surrounded by fake news were most prevalent during the 2020 pandemic. When asked
about whether they have ever been involved in sharing fake news, 56.1% said they have
shared fake news by mistake, while 44.1% said they have never done so. This research
provides an interesting perspective that even fake news is not only a challenge and a
trap for ordinary people, but also a challenge for the future of journalism as well.
Thus, the systematic literature review on media literacy in digital media in the period
2020-2023 answers the research question regarding the influence of the shift from print
media to digital media on users' media literacy in criticizing news. This is shown by the
fact that it is still difficult for people to identify fake news. Moreover, they have not yet
recognized the characteristics of the wrong news message. In the above studies, it was
found that there is still a lack of education about media literacy. One of the things that
can be considered as a solution is to add a media literacy curriculum to the education
sector, which is the initial foundation for educating the younger generation. Therefore,
it is necessary for media literacy skills to continue to be promoted to train critical
thinking.