CLIMATE CHANGE MISINFORMATION & LITERACY: PERCEPTION OF SELECTED UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN A UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

The paper presented the findings about the perceptions of selected undergraduate students on climate change misinformation and literacy. Empirical data was collected using an exploratory approach. The perception of 60 selected undergraduates on climate change misinformation and the use of Open Education Resources (OERs) to curb climate misinformation. To reduce biases, students selected for data collection were not in disciplines related to environmental sciences, geography or climate science. The data collected indicated that the students understand that climate change exists, although over half of the respondents were not sure if they had been misinformed about climate change from their most used sources of climate change information. The study concluded that climate change awareness is rapidly gaining ground as the perception about climate change and its consequences is no longer in doubt among the students. The study recommended that librarians in the open access space play a key role by increasing accessibility to diverse high quality OERs that would provide accurate information on climate change. Librarians can also use social media platforms and other digital tools to enhance students’ critical thinking and media literacy skills thereby enabling them to discern credible information about climate change from misinformation.