Choi Su-jin poses in her office at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, July 5. Courtesy of Bereket Alemayehu

A strong understanding of our unconscious biases, or "bias literacy," is urgently needed for people to identify fake news, misinformation and disinformation in digital media, according to Choi Su-jin, a professor of media at Kyung Hee University.

For many years, she has been researching digital journalism and political communication from the user's perspective to investigate the determinants and consequences of online news authorship verification. One of her research projects highlights the role of psychological motives and behavioral patterns in news authorship verification.

The author and co-author of seven books on journalism and media, technology and network analysis met with the Korea Times to share her research and what is needed to improve bias literacy in modern-day news media consumers.

What inspired you to investigate the determinants and consequences of online news authorship verification?

I do research in digital journalism and political communication from the perspective of general consumers — not journalists or politicians. I usually use methods like network analysis and surveys to conduct the research. And recently I have been interested in the news on digital platforms.

We found many side effects of digital journalism, and the situation is especially severe in Korea. When I started my search 10 years ago, the digital news market was burgeoning. For more attention and views, news outlets started using sensational and provocative headlines, practicing clickbait journalism for more revenue and survival in the market.

The side effects of the rise of digital journalism occurred in the transition phase from print journalism to digital. Because the movement of readers from print to digital was so fast, newspapers had to adapt to the market they were not accustomed to. I thought then, "How can we end the cycle of clickbait journalism?"

All of us are addicted to clickbait journalism where media outlets always publish the same news with a slightly different headline. We don't consider whether this is important or not. We just satisfy our search for something without knowing what the search is for. If it arouses some excitement, then we just tend to click it.

That was the reason I was thinking of news authorship. The authorship does not necessarily mean who wrote the story. I also mean the publications they write for, as many readers don't care about who writes news, no matter how news-savvy they are.

Your research highlights the role of psychological motives and behavioral patterns in news authorship verification. Can you provide more details on which motives and behaviors were most influential?

The most interesting finding is that readers who check the authors of the news more trust the media less. That shocked me.

I measured credibility by asking people whether they trusted Korean news outlets.

I had multiple-choice questions for them to answer, including "Do you think the press is accurate?" "Do you think the press is objective?" "Do you think they are balanced?" "Do you think they are doing in-depth reporting?" and "Do you think they are including diverse perspectives?"

I summed up their responses and created a press credibility index.

What I found was that the more you check the author of the news, the less likely you are to trust the media and vice versa. This suggests that people who consume news without considering the source tend to trust the media without question.

I also checked the relationship the other way around. If you trust the media, do you tend to check the source of the news more?

If you blindly consume news, if you don't verify the information, then you might be more susceptible to fake news, disinformation or misinformation. Authorship checking is the most basic level of information verification skill.

If you don't have any political perspectives, then you might be less susceptible to those kinds of news reports or information. But if you have a strong political ideology, extreme right or extreme left, your confirmation bias might make you more susceptible to fake news.

In the context of the current media landscape, with increasing concerns about fake news and misinformation, how do you see the role of authorship verification evolving as an important tool? What recommendations would you give to news consumers to navigate the complexities of online news?

Fake news has been around for a long time. Now the speed has tremendously increased compared to the old days. It's almost every day that people fabricate fake news. What seems to be important is how we distinguish high-quality news from low-quality news. What determines high-quality news? If you think of that, you cannot be deceived by fake news. Completely detecting fake news and eliminating it is impossible.

I recommend people to check the who wrote the stories they read be and that is the most basic thing to do. There are also related to verification skills, like cross-checking the information and looking up whether the sources are up to date.

But more fundamentally, regarding the fake news phenomenon, we have to understand our bias. I propose the term "bias literacy."

These days people say we have to learn artificial intelligence literacy. In the near future, there might be the concept robot literacy on how to live with robots. In the past several years, we had to learn big data literacy, internet literacy and television literacy, over and over and over. So whenever new technology comes up, we always say we have to learn that literacy.

But what is literacy? Literacy means understanding the thing in a critical sense. But the literacy we are saying here is not literacy but learning skills.

Media technology keeps changing, but what remains the same is bias. Information and news are always present, and our biases are always present. In the current era of information and news, bias literacy is becoming increasingly important.

Choi Su-jin poses on Kyung Hee University's campus in Seoul, July 5. Courtesy of Bereket Alemayehu

How can news outlets and journalists use your findings to improve their credibility with the public? Are there specific practices or strategies they should adopt?

I have researched how people evaluate quality news. The basic question was whether the way people think this news is high quality is similar to what journalists think is high quality.

Similar or not similar? That was my question. If journalists think 'this is really good news,' would the general news consumers think it is good work of journalism as well? I asked not the journalist but the editors. And I asked the general public to rate the quality of news articles by reading them. I gave 10 news articles to around 8,000 news readers. Ten news articles for 50 readers, another 50 people, 10 different news articles. I have done that with around 8,000 news readers.

Numerous news articles were evaluated. What I found was that journalists and readers agree on what constitutes a high-quality news story and a low-quality article. Of course, the middle ground is mixed. However, there is a general consensus between the two groups, even though one is professional and the other is not.

I want to tell journalists that they don't need to write clickbait stories. That might increase your revenue in the short term, but readers will eventually acknowledge the quality of their stories when they produce high-quality news.

Did your research explore any cross-cultural differences in how news authorship verification and credibility are perceived? How might your findings apply in different cultural contexts?

I am trying to do a project with a Swiss professor who is interested in doing collaborative research involving Korea and Switzerland. We are trying to measure the quality of news produced in the two countries because Switzerland has high press credibility and Korea has low press credibility.

Switzerland is a multicultural country, more so than Korea, while Korea has a homogenous culture. Korea only uses the Korean language while Switzerland uses many.

If we consider just this, we might think that media outlets in Korea are more credible than those in Switzerland. One would assume there might be less misunderstanding among readers. However, the exact opposite is true. We wanted to determine what differences between the two countries led to this counterintuitive phenomenon.

Visit sites.google.com/khu.ac.kr/sujinchoi for more information.

Bereket Alemayehu is an Ethiopian photo artist, social activist and writer based in Seoul. He's also the co-founder of Hanokers, a refugee-led social initiative and a freelance contributor for Pressenza Press Agency.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.