Philipp Marten

Grateful for the recognition and the valuable feedback during the conference 🙌

Looking forward to completing the next phase of the study so that we can share the results with a wider audience.

#misinforesearch #textdiscourse #ChatGPT #evaluationstrategies #telekomstiftung #gradstudentaward

Special thanks to my supervisor @marcstadtler.bsky.social and Mykola Makhortykh for their collaboration as well as Deutsche Telekom Stiftung for supporting this research.

So, what does this mean?
🤖 AI tools like ChatGPT may assist with sourcing but they still fall short in critical information evaluation.

They cannot - and should not - replace human judgment in online reasoning.

ChatGPT outperformed human participants in source discernment but only when all relevant information was clearly available.

💡 It struggled when sources were less credible or information was not available in the materials.

Philipp Marten holding a presentation at the 2025 meeting of the Society for Text & Discourse

In the study, we compared ChatGPT’s performance on sourcing and corroboration tasks with that of lower and upper secondary as well as teacher students.

Joe Magliano handing over the Graduate Student Award 2025 from the Society for Text and Discourse to Philipp Marten

Honored to receive the Graduate Student Award 2025 from @textdiscourse.bsky.social for my presentation “Can AI take over my evaluation task? Probably not! Comparing sourcing and corroboration performance of ChatGPT with that of adolescents and young adults”!

Here’s what we found 🧵👇

Many thanks to my co-authors Sandra Aßmann, Carolin Baumgarten, and @marcstadtler.bsky.social.

Did 5G radiation really kill birds? Training lower secondary students in epistemic strategies to counter online misinformation The prevalence of misinformation calls for new approaches to enhance students' critical reading skills. This study examined the effectiveness of a tra…

Bottom line:
Teaching adolescents to sourcing and corroboration makes them more resilient to online misinformation—and the effects last.

If you’re serious about building digital resilience in the next generation, start here 👇

🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Also interesting: Higher reading proficiency = greater benefit from training

Our findings suggest that cultivating sourcing and corroboration may be more effective to counter misinformation than teaching how misinformation looks like, who spreads it, and how it unfolds its effects.

🕒 And it stuck.
Four weeks after the training, gains in:
- Source evaluation ✅
- Debunking social media misinformation ✅
…remained stable.

Metastrategic knowledge decreased a bit—but core skills held strong.

Strategy-trained students:
✅ Identified credible sources more accurately
✅ Debunked misinformation using corroboration
✅ Gained metastrategic knowledge of sourcing and corroboration, improving in when and how to apply the strategies

In our study, 210 seventh- and eighth-graders received either:
1) Strategy training (sourcing + corroboration)
2) Control training (knowledge about misinformation)

Guess who got better at evaluating online sources and social media misinformation? 👀

Screenshot of the articles title page, including title, authors and abstract

Exciting new publication!
We trained adolescents in epistemic strategies—and it worked. Students became more resilient to online misinformation, with effects lasting weeks.

Read the open access paper:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#digitalreading #misinforesearch #openaccess #digitalskills

Alt-Txt: Two people stand before multi-color strips of paper with text on them that stretch down an entire wall and onto the floor. The title of the installation "I Agree" appear in all caps on the wall, too.

Love this. In his “I Agree” installation Dima Yarovinsky-Yahel took the content from terms of service statements for companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder and printed them out on A4 paper with a standard font size for legal contracts to demonstrate the length of these agreements.

Rechtsextremistische Straftaten haben an Schulen (teils sprunghaft) zugenommen. Quelle: @zeit.de

Diese Firma darf niemals an unsere Daten in Europa kommen. Jede bereits bestehende Zusammenarbeit (Bayern und Hessen z.B.) ist eine gravierender Fehler und muss sofort gestoppt werden. Demokratische Staaten dürfen nicht mit faschistischen Tech-Oligarchen kooperieren. Niemals.

Das Pferd ist ein Sieger. Setz alles auf Horst!

Horst 🐎

Very interesting long-read thread about the dimensions truth and honesty in public discourse and how US politics has decreased in their fact-based speech over time.

Neonazi erschiesst 17jährige in Hessen.

Rechtsextreme in NRW bedrohen Schulen, 18000 müssen zu Hause bleiben.

Opferberatung in Thrüringen meldet Höchststand rechtsextrem motivierter Gewalt.
——-
Meldungen aus einer (!) Woche.

Palantir: US-Software für die deutsche Polizei – was kann da schon schiefgehen? Der Bundesrat möchte die umstrittene Analysesoftware von Palantir bundesweit für die Polizeiarbeit einsetzen. Das ist eine schlechte Idee, aus mehreren Gründen.

"Dass es vielleicht keine gute Idee ist, in Zeiten transatlantischer Verwerfungen die privaten Daten deutscher Bürgerinnen und Bürger mit der Analysesoftware eines umstrittenen Unternehmens aus den USA zu durchleuchten, scheint den Mitgliedern des Bundesrates mehrheitlich nicht bewusst zu sein."

We conclude: By fostering a deep understanding and practical application of evaluation strategies (in particular sourcing and corroboration) students can be better equipped to make informed decisions about whom to trust and what to believe in digital environments.

The findings indicate that teachers were able to implement the provided training program and achieve some notable improvements in their students‘ learning outcomes in the short- and midterm.

Contrary to the hypotheses, the training did neither improve
performance in corroborating deepfake and genuine videos, nor did it reduce metastrategic knowledge about
utilizing superficial appearance evaluation strategies for identifying deepfakes.

Assessed at three measurement points, we saw an improvement in the discernment between credible and non-credible sources, corroborating misleading online claims and in metastrategic knowledge of sourcing and corroboration. Results remained stable over a period of a month.

Picture of the first page of Building resilience against online misinformation: A teacher-led training promoting evaluation strategies among lower secondary students, including the abstract.

Out now: We designed and evaluated a teacher-led training that promoted sourcing and corroboration strategies, enhancing lower secondary students’ capacities to identify reliable information and credible sources on the internet. #misinforesearch @marcstadtler.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

Wer glaubt, dass Nationalsozialisten Sozialisten waren, der glaubt auch, dass Zitronenfalter Zitronen falten.

@cemas.io hat heute einen Bericht über die Doppelgänger veröffentlicht. Das ist die Desinformationskampagne, die westliche Medien imitiert und so prorussische Inhalte verbreitet. Die wichtigsten Infos aus dem Bericht:

Ein Detail aus den Akten: Die Ministeriumsspitze ließ übrigens nicht nur auflisten, wer Fördermittel aus Ministeriumsprojekten erhält, sondern auch, wer Gutachter*in für das Ministerium ist. Umfassende Recherche.

Man muss das so klar sagen: Die Union verpackt fossile Desinformation in politische „Forderungen“.

Das ist das von Charles Kochs Propagandasöldnern perfektionierte, von der INSM und den „Familienunternehmer n“ importierte Prinzip „Zweifel säen“.

#MännerDieDieWeltVerbrennen