Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

Despite unprecedented entree to accusation successful the integer age, young citizens look increasing challenges related to news depletion and misinformation. This large-scale randomized controlled proceedings examines the effect of 2 complementary interventions designed to foster media literacy and the depletion of high-quality news among high-school students, implemented successful France complete the 2024-25 world year. The study involves 243 precocious schools (for a full number of 9,628 students), randomly assigned to a power group aliases to person 1 aliases some of the pursuing interventions: (i) a one-year free integer subscription to the starring nationalist newspaper, and (ii) media acquisition modules implemented by teachers. Exploiting unsocial information connected students' existent online news consumption, we archive a very ample uptake of the free subscription, which translates into persistent and ample increases successful news depletion (+0.49 to 0.60 sd) and request for early news, including an 8pp summation successful paid subscriptions astir a twelvemonth aft the intervention. We besides observe a 0.20 to 0.31 sd summation successful news knowledge for students enrolled successful deprived schools, reducing baseline accusation inequality by 45-70%. Finally, we show that some free news entree and media acquisition amended media literacy skills (+0.08 to 0.26 sd), pinch larger effects among students taught by teachers pinch anterior acquisition successful media education.