Literacy in a post-truth world

Abstract

: This theoretical paper examines whether acquiring better literacy skills may help people to be less vulnerable to various types of information disorders such as fake news or conspiracy theories. We start this venture by looking, first, at the relationships between vulnerability to information disorders and literacy (or, more generally, formal education), and second, at the literacy-induced transfer effects on cognitive skills. Then we will comment on some interesting findings made within the framework of an experimental project in which we examined subliterate adults and adolescents. Grounded on these results, we conjecture on the relationships between literacy, logical reasoning, critical thinking and endorsement of conspiracy theories.

Keywords

• literacy
• logical reasoning
• critical thinking
• conspiracy theories