The Role of Information Literacy Competencies in Reducing the Effect of Infodemic: The Case of COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of Information Literacy Competencies (ILC) in curtailing infodemic within a sample of undergraduate students of library and information science. The researcher used quantitative research approach using questionnaires to collect data on both levels of ILC and infodemic. The results revealed that students highly practice ILC; however, the levels of infodemic were reported in moderate level. The findings provide a contradicting situation as such educated students who highly practice ILC should be able to distinguish between true and incorrect information related to COVID-19; however this was not seen, as despite our students highly practices ILC, they still have moderate levels of believing and circulating misinformation on the virus. The findings provide insight to governments to develop information literacy programs focuses on social media use from an early age.

KEYWORDS:

• Information literacy competencies
• Misinformation
• Fake news
• Disinformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).