Teaching on conspiracy theories should start in primary schools

Summary: The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee has decided to examine how to improve media literacy in their latest inquiry. This week, Full Fact’s CEO, Chris Morris, gave evidence in person to the committee, and he called on the government to take more responsibility for this issue. 

“It’s up to the government, it’s up to parliament, it’s up to regulators to think about the values we want to embed in our society, how to ensure that critical thinking takes root in a world where there are very different views about what information and how information should be dealt with.”

The Inquiry, which will be hearing evidence over the next few months, seeks to “establish a clear vision for what good media literacy would look like in the UK, and examine the barriers to achieving this vision.”

What needs to be done?

This evidence session covered specific proposals that the government and educators can take on this issue. For teachers specifically, two key actions were outlined:

• Teaching on conspiracy theories should start in primary schools.
• Teachers need to be empowered to counter claims that young people say. 

But the issue of media literacy can’t just focus on young people, and as Chris said in his evidence, Full Fact’s focus groups have shown that people are concerned about how older generations are dealing with false information. Media literacy is a skill needed at all ages and the government must look beyond the scope of just focusing on education to promote media literacy. 

This change needs to be led by shifts in government policy, who have historically not known where media literacy sits. In order to take on this issue, Full Fact recommends that a cross-departmental taskforce be coordinated on media literacy, with the Department for Education supporting teachers and students, the Home Office overseeing when a lack of media literacy can lead to extremism, DCMS bridging the gap between media outlets and media literacy, and DSIT supporting online safety. 

Why do we need media literacy? 

In his evidence to the Committee, Chris Morris explained why this issue requires urgent attention and why Full Fact has been calling for great support for media literacy for years. Full Fact has long argued that good media literacy is the first line of defence against bad information online. It can be the difference between making decisions based on sound evidence, and making decisions based on poorly informed opinions. 

A survey carried out by Ipsos UK and Full Fact in December 2023 found that one in four UK adults finds it difficult to distinguish true information from false information, and that one in three adults had falsely believed a news story was real until they found out it was fake.

Pointing to how the large internet platforms are dominating the information environment, Chris Morris explained that “information is currency, data is what runs our world and we have serious concerns about what the large internet platforms, some of the most powerful organisations the world has ever seen potentially backsliding on some of the commitments they’ve made, with things like fact checking and content moderation.”

There’s plenty of work to be done to ensure that we move from discussing the importance of media literacy initiatives to actually seeing robust new training and learning programmes across the country.  Full Fact will be exploring more recommendations on improving media literacy in our upcoming annual report, which will be published on 13 May.