ЭЭГ корреляты влияния навыков медиаграмотности на восприятие нарративов

News and documentary films have a significant effect on the viewers’ beliefs and attitudes. Such influence of media narratives can be used to manipulate public opinion. This raises a concern about the possibility to resist media impact: to notice manipulations and not to fall under their influence. In this study we considered the neural correlates of the media narrative processing and whether the use of media literacy skills could reduce susceptibility to influence of media. We examined the differences and similarities of the electrophysiological brain activity during the processing of ambiguous media narratives among those who applied media literacy skills and those who did not. To analyze patterns of brain activity, we used an inter-subject correlation (ISC) approach. With the benefits of ISC it was possible to consider how engaging the narratives were for the audience and to analyze the correlation between the decrease of involvement in the story and the decrease of social conformity. A total of 30 subjects participated in the experiment. The subjects were divided into two groups based on whether they had a university training in media literacy or not. The subjects watched three videos: the fragments from the news and documentary movies that contained fake facts and some sort of manipulations. As a control condition, the fragment from a fictional movie was also shown to the participants. Before and after each video the subjects expressed their attitudes toward some social problems related to the topics of the videos. We then investigated how the attitudes changed in comparison between two groups of participants and whether there was a correlation of such change with the level of engagement in the narratives within the groups. We found that the ISC of the cortical activity within the group trained in media literacy differed from the ISC of the control group during the processing of the fake narratives. However, we did not fully confirm that the reason for the difference in the brain signal synchronization within the groups was related to the application of media literacy skills by the subjects of the trained group. We also did not find a correlation between the attitude change and EEG correlates of the narrative processing. Nevertheless, we received some conclusive results from the conformity scale assessment and its correlation with ISC. Overall, our results show the difference in cortical activity during the media narratives processing in those subjects who studied media literacy and those who did not.