News, Information and Disinformation Literacy
What is tested
This domain tests whether you can evaluate information rather than merely consume it: identify news values, trace sources, distinguish kinds of false content, and apply verification techniques under exam conditions.
Core concepts
- News values (Galtung and Ruge): proximity, recency, prominence, negativity, conflict, human interest, novelty and elite nations or people. They explain what becomes news and what is systematically ignored.
- Gatekeeping and agenda-setting: editors select and rank; ranking signals importance.
- Misinformation, disinformation, malinformation: false content shared without intent to deceive; false content created and spread deliberately; genuine information shared to cause harm.
- Verification: lateral reading (leave the page and check what others say), triangulating independent sources, checking original publication date and context, reverse image search, tracing a quote to source, checking URL and ownership.
- SIFT: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims to the original.
- Platform issues: clickbait, native advertising mimicking editorial, deepfakes and AI-generated text, coordinated inauthentic behaviour, filter bubbles.
Worked example
A viral clip claims a flood in a Maltese town. Reverse image search the frames; check whether official agencies or local news have reported it; check the date against weather records; examine the account's history. If the earliest posting is years old and from another country, the claim fails regardless of shares. Report the finding as 'unverified and probably recycled', citing your checks - not merely 'fake'.
Traps
- Treating a professional-looking site or a blue tick as proof.
- Confusing popularity with accuracy.
- Calling honest error 'disinformation'.
- Accepting a video without checking date and location.