Information vulnerability and influence engineering: Experiences of students in developing nations during elections

This study examined information vulnerability and influence engineering among Library and Information Science (LIS) students in Nigeria during elections, focusing on exposure to misinformation, verification practices, sharing behavior, and coping strategies. The study adopted a quantitative research design, complemented by semi-structured interviews. Researchers collected data through an online questionnaire from 425 LIS students across Nigerian universities and analyzed them using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, binary logistic regression, and multiple regression. The findings showed that awareness of influence engineering was almost evenly divided, with 50.1% of respondents reporting awareness. False political claims or promises were the most common form of election-related misinformation (32.8%), followed by manipulated statistics or polls (25.9%) and fake visuals (22.4%). Age, gender, level of study, and social media use significantly predicted misinformation-sharing behavior. Exposure to misinformation was significantly associated with verification practices, confidence in identifying false information, and perceived influence on political perceptions. However, coping strategies did not significantly predict vulnerability to influence engineering, while perceived training adequacy showed a small positive association with vulnerability. The study concludes that interconnected behavioral, informational, and contextual factors shape information vulnerability during elections, highlighting the need for targeted information-literacy, verification, and influence-awareness interventions among university students.