Using fake news as reading materials to promote students’ critical thinking skills

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Introduction

In the current era, technology is developing very rapidly and is getting more sophisticated. In line with this, the spread of information in the current era has also become very fast, in just seconds information can be spread to various regions. So much information is spread on the internet without us knowing the truth. Every day we are presented with various types of world news without knowing which news is true and which news is deliberately made up for certain purposes. In these conditions it is important to teach students to be information literate. They must know how to sort out information so as not to misunderstand information. Students must be equipped with the ability to identify fake news. Fake news is news that is deliberately fabricated and engineered to be as similar as possible to credible journalism in order to attract the attention of many general public and has a specific purpose (Hunt, 2016). In the US, the context of fake news is very much discussed. Stanley (2015, para.1) adds that fake news is language that is deliberately used and spread to influence ways of thinking and understanding about public issues. Fake news is also often made to look as similar as possible to the format of credible journalists to give legitimacy to the use of propaganda, so that it looks like public discourse in general (Joshua Habgood Coote, 2018). 

Desai et al. (2020) classify fake news into seven categories: (a) satire or parody, (b) misleading content, (c) deceptive content, (d) engineered content, (e) false connections, (f) false context, and (g) manipulated content. With the many types of fake news, it is hoped that educators can equip students with media literacy skills to help students recognize and understand the types of news they get. Hobbs expects all UK curricula to include terms such as propaganda, disinformation, clickbait, hoax, satire and sponsored content. 

With the rapid development of technology, the use of social media has become very prevalent. The spread of information on social media moves very fast, within seconds an event can be spread to various regions. Moreover, social media is used by the entire community, teenagers, adults, and even children. In 2018, based on a Pew Research survey, it is known that around forty Americans know news developments through Facebook (Geiger, 2019). In the US presidential campaign in 2016, during the three months of the critical period many mass media aggressively issued fake news. For example, on a blog page on Facebook, news with the title “political parties in fierce disagreement” managed to get 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments (Silverman, 2016 para. 2). Lombrozo (2018) argues that the situation of the rapid spread of existing information causes some individuals to share stories or information without filtering and checking the truth of the stories or information they get, and some individuals tend to choose story content or information with the same concept repeatedly based on personal beliefs.

Pennycook and Rand (2019) who are psychologists at Yale University conducted a study on 3,446 workers on Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a crowdsourcing marketplace. They used the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) created by psychologist Shane Frederick in 2005. The CRT focuses on the human ability to take extra time to reflect on the right answer. The CRT was used to look at participants' analytical reasoning skills to help them recognize and analyze fake news. As a result, “susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than by partisan bias-a finding that opens up potential avenues for countering fake news” (p. 39).

Literature Review

Not many researchers have studied the use of fake news to improve students' critical thinking skills, and not many teachers have implemented this activity in their teaching. However, several previous researchers have successfully studied this activity. Nurfazri & et al (2025) found that students were able to use their critical thinking skills to the fullest. This study was analyzed through two interventions. First, they were given frameworks that they used to analyze two news articles. In the first intervention, the focus was on analyzing the issues in the news and the author's purpose in writing the news. The second intervention focused on analyzing bias in the news and summarizing the content of the news. As a result, the students were able to question aspects that they felt were inappropriate or inconsistent with their beliefs. They used open-ended questions when analyzing the news.

Machete & Turpin (2022) stated that many people still cannot distinguish between real news and fake news. Based on their research using a systematic literature review method, they found that people still easily believe fake news, and a lot of fake news was spread, especially during the 2016 US election. The researchers emphasized the importance of information literacy for the public to be able to distinguish between authentic and fake news. Puig B, Blanco-Anaya P and Pérez-Maceira JJ (2021) analyze students' critical thinking skills using Covid-19 texts, they were presented with several texts related to Covid, only 1 of which was authentic. Critical thinking is influenced by students' prior knowledge, so students can compare the information provided in the news with the information they already know. Individuals who have good critical thinking skills will tend not to act hastily. They tend to actively analyze and evaluate the content and information contained in a news story (Orhan, 2023). Each individual has their own technique for recognizing fake news. Their educational background and occupation greatly influence how they analyze news (Weiss, A.P., Alwan, A., Garcia, E.P. et al., 2020).

Method

Researchers used a literature review method to analyze the use of fake news as a tool to improve critical thinking skills. A literature review is a research method that involves collecting and evaluating data from previous studies in order to gain a deeper understanding of a topic. In this study, the review focused on studies that examined the benefits of using fake news to improve students' critical thinking skills.

The research sources in this article are five journal publications published between 2020 and 2025. These articles were selected by the researchers because they are relevant to the research topic and have undergone a review process. The selected studies are the results of research on students, university students, and the general public.

Discussion

From the five research journals, it was found that there is still a lot of fake news being spread among the public. Fake news is most often found on social media, oral communication, and television (Weiss, A.P., Alwan, A., Garcia, E.P. et al., 2020). Many people still cannot distinguish between fake news and real news. However, there is a silver lining in the field of education. Many students are already using their critical thinking skills to determine the truthfulness of news articles. They ask open-ended questions when analyzing news articles. They are also capable of analyzing bias within a news text. It is known that students ask more questions about fake news texts than authentic news texts. This is because the content of the news does not align with the scientific knowledge they have learned or their prior knowledge. They find inconsistencies between their prior knowledge and the content of the news presented.

It is important for teachers to provide guidance and a framework to help students hone their critical thinking skills. The role of teachers in this study is quite significant. They help students question the authenticity of news by answering questions based on the existing framework, then guide students to ask open-ended questions related to the news presented.