Att fostra framtidens digitala medborgare : Vikten av digital källkritik och hur vi kan undervisa om den

Sammanfattning: In the context of Swedish students' difficulties to separate facts from opinions, we wanted to investigate why digital literacy, and especially source credibility, is important and how teachers in civics and the social sciences can teach students these skills. Studies show that upper secondary school students often turn to online sources when searching for information, rather than turning to traditional media. This is not a problem in itself, however, what is worrying is that the increasing spread of disinformation in combination with the lack of methods to verify true information adventures students' formation of opinions. In a society where young people consume more and more digital media this is truly alarming for future citizens and democracy. Therefore, in this literature review based on previous research, we give multiple reasons for why digital literacy, and especially source credibility, is important. But how should civics teachers teach digital literacy? This text also gives the tools by presenting four principles for guidance when planning classes where digital literacy will be taught. Furthermore, we present the idea of digital literacy as an active act and we also talk about the importance of examining each source from more than one perspective. Disciplinary literacy and the necessity of the teacher’s role as a disciplinary expert is also discussed in this paper. We then present and stress the importance of the three types of misinformation and give a few suggestions on how to use them. The next finding in our search for how to teach digital literacy to students is the benefits of working in a group of peers. Our take from this is that, in order to get out of your own “echo chamber”, group work can bring a set of different backgrounds, opinions and knowledge to the table when trying to make sense of everything the internet has to offer, good and bad.