"Pre-Bunk" Tactics Reduce Public Susceptibility to COVID-19 Conspiracies and Falsehoods, Study Finds
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
'Pre-bunk' tactics reduce public susceptibility to COVID-19 conspiracies and falsehoods, study finds:
A short online game designed to fight conspiracies about COVID-19 boosts people's confidence in detecting misinformation by increasing their ability to perceive its "manipulativeness" compared to genuine news, according to a study.
[...] The five-minute game puts people in the shoes of a purveyor of fake pandemic news, encouraging players to create panic by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 using social media - all within the confines of the game.
Researchers say that, by giving people this taste of the techniques used to disseminate fake news, it acts as an inoculant: building a psychological resistance against malicious falsehoods by raising awareness of how misinformation works.
"While fact-checking is vital work, it can come too late. Trying to debunk misinformation after it spreads is often a difficult if not impossible task," said Prof Sander van der Linden, Director of the Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge University.
Journal Reference:
Melisa Basol, Jon Roozenbeek, Manon Berriche, et al. Towards psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural evidence for two prebunking interventions against COVID-19 misinformation: [open], Big Data & Society (DOI: 10.1177/20539517211013868)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.