Assessing and fostering college students' algorithm awareness across online contexts
Open accessAbstract
Internet users may fail to recognize how algorithms filter and personalize information. Two studies explored college students’ algorithm awareness across varying contexts. Study 1 examined Facebook users’ awareness of its algorithms (N = 222). Only about half recognized that Facebook does not show all their friends’ posts. These students more often reported making adjustments to News Feed settings than students lacking algorithm awareness. Study 2 compared students’ (N = 244) algorithm awareness for online shopping and search, and the efficacy of video instruction to increase awareness. Students were more algorithm aware for online shopping. Compared to those who watched a video on Internet storage, students who watched a video on Internet algorithms showed greater understanding of how search results are personalized. Across studies, students demonstrated high media literacy knowledge, yet knowledge was inconsistently related to algorithm awareness. This suggests the need to incorporate instruction about algorithms into media literacy curricula.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Recent studies have suggested that students' algorithmic literacy skills were too low.
“Recent studies have suggested that students' algorithmic literacy skills were too low (Brodsky et al., 2020;Head et al., 2020;Koenig, 2020;Powers, 2017).”
From Expanding on the Frames: Making a Case for Algorithmic Literacy (2023) · cites this paper as Brodsky et al., 2020
Cites
The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families
O'Keeffe, G. S., Clarke-Pearson, K., & Council on Communications and Media (2011) · Pediatrics · doi:10.1542/peds.2011-0054 · Cited by 1,987 · see citing works
Does discovery-based instruction enhance learning?
Alfieri, L., Brooks, P. J., Aldrich, N. J., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2011) · Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0021017 · Cited by 1,338 · cited 1× · see citing works
“This finding is in keeping with the previous research on the benefits of direct instruction over unassisted discovery-based learning across academic domains (Alfieri et al., 2011).”
ResultSelf-citationCan Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018) · Theory & Research in Social Education · doi:10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320 · Cited by 533 · see citing works
First I "like" it, then I hide it: Folk Theories of Social Feeds
Eslami, M., Karahalios, K., Sandvig, C., Vaccaro, K., Rickman, A., Hamilton, K., & Kirlik, A. (2016) · Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/2858036.2858494 · Cited by 375 · see citing works
DeVito, M. A., Birnholtz, J., Hancock, J. T., French, M., & Liu, S. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3173694 · Cited by 244 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Development and Validation of an Algorithm Literacy Scale for Internet Users
Dogruel, L., Masur, P., & Joeckel, S. (2022) · Communication Methods and Measures · doi:10.1080/19312458.2021.1968361 · Cited by 177 · see citing works
Expanding on the Frames: Making a Case for Algorithmic Literacy
Loyola Marymount University, & Archambault, S. (2023) · Communications in Information Literacy · doi:10.15760/comminfolit.2023.17.2.11 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
- Authors
- Brodsky, J. E., Zomberg, D., Powers, K. L., & Brooks, P. J.
- Affiliations
- The Graduate Center, CUNY (US)
- LaGuardia Community College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Brodsky, Jessica E.
- Venue
- Journal of Media Literacy Education
- Publisher
- University of Rhode Island
- Published
- 2020-12-14
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 43-57
- ISSN
- 2167-8715 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3111652023
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 16.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Media Literacy Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Journal of Media Literacy Education (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literacy, Media, and Education
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Digital Media and Philosophy
- Keywords
- algorithm awareness, university students, Facebook, news feeds, online shopping, personalized search, video instruction, media literacy, algorithmic filtering
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
