**5. Results**

The main focus was placed on Q3—If Greenpeace were to ask you to save this animal, would you support this by signing? YES, because [ ... ] NO, because [ ... ] (choose one), as it addressed the children and adolescents' disposition to undertake action when asked by an external source. Therefore, the participants that answered the third question affirmatively were considered to perceive the hoax website as trustworthy, thus avoiding biasing the students by directly asking them if the source was reliable to them.

The study conducted in the Netherlands by Loos et al. [2] in 2017 found that 2 of the 27 children in the study group recognized the hoax site as being fake. The authors sugges<sup>t</sup> that there were some factors that had an influence on the respondents, including the formal environment, the trust they had in their teacher, and the fact that the animal was presented as being endangered. The latter was confirmed in the Romanian study, as 20 of the 54 respondents said they would support the Greenpeace initiative because they consider protecting at-risk animals to be especially important.

The experiment was conducted in the respondents' school and the researcher was introduced to the students by their teacher, these two aspects having increased potential to influence the answers provided and the way the respondents related to the information. During the debriefing sessions, both the students and the teachers' feedback confirmed the possibility that the answers were distorted by the environment ("*They have learned to adapt to any kind of situation presented in the texts they analyze—real or fictional—and often do not ask too many questions*", "*We also took into account the fact that we were asked to take this seriously and we did not think that would be something fake*"). Two of the high school students

expressed significant doubts about the *jackalope* during the experiment and concluded that the animal does not exist. Nonetheless, both of them answered that they would sign the Greenpeace petition, motivating their choice by explaining that they feared being ridiculed by their peers, even if they were initially told the responses were anonymous ("*We saw that everyone was answering and we didn't want them to make a fool of ourselves*"). Thus, in addition to the sensitive subject, the space, and the teacher's authority, peer pressure should be considered when observing the factors biasing the respondents.

In Romania, only 3 of the 33 children and 1 of the 21 adolescents indicated that they would not sign a petition to save the *jackalope*. Even though, following the Loos et al. [2] study's design, this would sugges<sup>t</sup> that the four respondents perceived the website as fake, their motives demonstrated the contrary—"*No, because it is a dangerous creature*", "*No, as it is an aggressive animal*", "*No, because it kills*". Consequently, when analyzing this study's results or similar studies' findings, the respondents' motives should be considered. Accordingly, it would be recommended for future similar studies to include open discussions, interviews, or focus groups in their debriefing sessions, with the purpose of understanding the results accurately.

When asked if there were any additional comments they would like to make, three of the high school students confirmed they thought the source was reliable: "*I found it interesting and I have learned new things*", "*It would be useful if there was a video material on the site and I think it should emphasize more the fact that humans, through their selfish actions, destroy this species*". Nine of the 33 children wrote additional observations in this part of the questionnaire. Their statements could be placed into one of the two categories: suggesting the respondents perceived the website as being reliable ("*Great! I like that it wants to save this animal*", "*I think this website is useful, because it tries to save an endangered animal*", "*I really liked the pictures*") or on the contrary, suggesting the respondents doubted the trustworthiness of the source ("*Does this animal exist in the world?*", "*The pictures make no sense*", "*Is this animal real?*").

The open discussions that followed the questionnaire revealed interesting facts about the reasons the students chose specific answers over others and about their thoughts on the website. Some of the high school respondents claimed that they searched for supplementary information on the Internet, but failed to retrieve relevant results "*I looked online, but didn't find any photo of it*", "*Me and my desk mate talked about not answering the question, as we typed the information on the Internet and didn't get any results back, but we thought that everyone was filling up the questionnaire, so* ... ". Hence, there were a few respondents who doubted the truthfulness of the source, but still a ffirmed that they would perform an action when asked by the said source. This is maybe one of the most important results of the study.

There could be important consequences of the fact that children and teenagers do as unreliable sources tell them to, on both an individual level and a societal level. Since 18- and 19-year-old high school students can use their right to vote, undertaking action when asked by an unreliable source could be a menace to the wellbeing of society. Moreover, the safety of children would be threatened by potentially being manipulated by dishonest entities.

Inasmuch as the research participants did not recognize the website as being a hoax, when observing the fake news identification process, there is an apparent lack of mechanisms helping pupils to fact check online information. During the open discussions, only three of the 54 students responded a ffirmatively when asked if they searched for additional online information, as the researcher mentioned this as being allowed prior to the experiment. No participant performed a reverse image search or considered the website URL to indicate an unreliable source, even though the URL extension was "wordpress.com", suggesting that the website author could be an untrustworthy or unauthorized individual.

#### **6. Discussion and Conclusions**

This study showed that only 4 of the 54 children and adolescents said they would not sign a petition to save the endangered *jackalope* if asked by Greenpeace, but through the open discussions and the answers given to the following questions, these 4 respondents proved to have considered the hoax website as trustworthy, leading to no respondent considering the source as fake. Hence, the Romanian study's results are even worse than the 2017 Dutch [2] research results, where 2 of the 27 school children recognized the given source as unreliable and explained why they perceived it in such a manner. When considering that the four respondents answering negatively to Q3 identified the source as being a hoax, however, the percentage of the Romanian respondents recognizing fake news (4%) is the same as their Dutch counterparts' [2], but lower than the 2007 [4] (11%) and the 2019 [3] (35%) US percentages.

Most of the authors discussing possible solutions for the fake news phenomenon sugges<sup>t</sup> technological solutions and supporting individuals in the fake news identification process. Considering the scholarly approaches on digital literacy and fake news [24,26,28–30] and the results of this study, the main way individuals could ge<sup>t</sup> to a better level of fake news identification is arguably through education. Italy and the US are just some of the states that include fake news identifying subjects in their curriculums [29]. The Romanian school curriculum currently lacks subjects—mandatory or optional—to approach digital literacy, the fake news phenomenon, and the e ffects it has on people or the ways people could distinguish between fake news and trustworthy information. In addition, carefully constructed legal measures could be adopted both on a national and a European level in order for the fake news outlets and authors to be held responsible and be discouraged.

This study had a number of limitations which should be considered when cited or replicated. The majority of these aspects are related to the methods or the research instrument. The number of study participants (54), even if higher than similar previous studies [2,4], could be increased in the case of future research, so that the findings could further enable generalization. In addition, not enough sociodemographic information was gathered through the questionnaire, which would have been relevant when discussing di fferent ways the environment (educational, economic, social, digital) can influence children and teenagers' ability to identify online fake news. As priorly mentioned, the location where the experiment was conducted (the classroom) potentially a ffected the participants' responses.

It is recommended to conduct a similar empirical study, with adjustments to the research design, using a control group and an experimental group to receive indication on how to identify fake news online, while including a digital literacy scale. The research could also involve three age groups—children, adults, and seniors, testing Prensky's perspective [10] on the di fferences between digital natives and digital immigrants in the case of digital literacy. Additionally, researchers should keep in mind that several factors could bias the respondents (e.g., the experiment subject, peer pressure, or the trust the respondents have in the teacher or the person introducing the researcher).

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
