CritiSense: Critical Digital Literacy and Resilience Against Misinformation

2026-03-17

AI Summary

This work addresses the growing threat of online misinformation, which undermines public rational decision-making and erodes trust in digital discourse. To enhance users’ preemptive resilience, we developed a mobile media literacy application—the first multilingual prebunking platform featuring modular design and support for nine languages. Through interactive microlearning modules and immediate feedback, the platform equips users with critical identification skills before exposure to false information. Its adaptable architecture enables rapid customization across diverse topics and domains, while also facilitating assessment of microlearning efficacy. A usability study (N=93) revealed high user satisfaction, with 83.9% reporting overall approval and 90.1% rating the interface as easy to use. Within three months of launch, the app attracted over 300 active users and is freely available on both the App Store and Google Play.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Natural Language Processing: Fact-Checking / Misinformation Detection (NLP Focus)
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Applications

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Mitigating misinformation and disinformation
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web learning to rank, online learning, and counterfactual learning for ranking

Abstract

Misinformation on social media undermines informed decision-making and public trust. Prebunking offers a proactive complement by helping users recognize manipulation tactics before they encounter them in the wild. We present CritiSense, a mobile media-literacy app that builds these skills through short, interactive challenges with instant feedback. It is the first multilingual (supporting nine languages) and modular platform, designed for rapid updates across topics and domains. We report a usability study with 93 users: 83.9% expressed overall satisfaction and 90.1% rated the app as easy to use. Qualitative feedback indicates that CritiSense helps improve digital literacy skills. Overall, it provides a multilingual prebunking platform and a testbed for measuring the impact of microlearning on misinformation resilience. Over 3+ months, we have reached 300+ active users. It is freely available to all users on the Apple App Store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/critisense/id6749675792) and Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.critisense&hl=en). Demo Video: https://shorturl.at/CDcdc

Problem

• misinformation
• digital literacy
• prebunking
• social media
• resilience

Innovation

• prebunking
• multilingual
• modular platform
• microlearning
• misinformation resilience