CritiSense: Critical Digital Literacy and Resilience Against Misinformation

TL;DR

CritiSense is a multilingual mobile app that enhances digital literacy and resilience against misinformation through interactive prebunking challenges, supported by a usability study and real-world deployment.

Contribution

It introduces the first multilingual, modular prebunking platform for digital literacy with a focus on rapid topic updates and measuring microlearning impacts.

Findings

83.9% users expressed overall satisfaction

90.1% rated the app as easy to use

Over 6 months, 500+ active users

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 6 months, we have reached 500+ 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).