The digital transformation has given 21st century students more opportunities to obtain information quickly and easily than ever before in any generation. However, especially on social media, the spread of misinformation is rapidly increasing and assessing the reliability of information and texts as a source of information is a major challenge for learners. To check the factuality of content of digital texts, they need not only technical know-how and expertise, but also Critical Textual Competence. This is a basic ability to critically evaluate content in texts in order to use media as a source of verified information in this way.

In this project, a new approach for the promotion of Critical Textual Competence (FiSci) is being developed, which is based, among other things, on inoculation, i.e. preventive measures for the initiation of cognitive competences in dealing with means of manipulation and disinformation. So far, such preventive measures have hardly been taken up in the German-speaking world and in the English-speaking world they have only been implemented within the framework of reading and media didactic interventions. The FiSci approach takes up the idea of preventive inoculation measures and expands it with didactic approaches to writing that go beyond the receptive approach and also evoke a productive engagement with disinformation through the writing of fake news by the learners themselves. It is also of central importance for FiSci that the confrontation with fake news initially takes place on the basis of didactically constructed fake news texts. This allows learners to focus on acquiring competences for identifying disinformation without being distracted by preconceived opinions or information (worldview-backfire effect).

Within the framework of the project, FiSci will be implemented in teaching modules for teaching German as a first, second and foreign language. Furthermore, professionalisation modules for language teachers, Citizen Science educational offers and multiplication tools for the education sector will be developed.