New research has established a different approach to help people resist misinformation online.<\/p>\n
Misleading content spreads online faster than you can say\u2026 misinformation. Today\u2019s digital landscape is rampant with misleading stories and half-truths. Falsehoods spread much faster than facts.<\/p>\n
\u201cMisinformation is a threat to society and the functioning of democracies worldwide,\u201d caution the authors of a study presented in the journal \u2018Nature Communications\u2019. \u201cIt is shown to have impacted a wide variety of critical issues such as vaccine uptake, support for mitigation of anthropogenic global warming, and political elections. Furthermore, misinformation has also been linked to real-world violence, such as mob violence in India and the burning of 5G installations.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what\u2019s more disturbing is that most people don\u2019t know how to effectively deal with misinformation. So how do we combat it?<\/p>\n
A research team led by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom (UK) introduced the \u201cpsychological booster shot\u201d \u2013 a targeted memory technique to protect ourselves or keep from getting fooled.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur research shows that just as medical booster shots enhance immunity, psychological booster shots can strengthen people\u2019s resistance to misinformation over time,\u201d stated lead researcher Rakoen Maertens from the Department of Experimental Psychology in a news release. \u201cBy integrating memory-boosting techniques into public education and digital literacy programs, we can help people retain these critical skills for much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers carried out five large-scale experiments that tested three different types of intervention on over 11,000 participants. Text-based tips, videos and interactive games were used to train them to recognise content that was manipulative.<\/p>\n
For the text-based intervention, the study volunteers read a message that explained common misinformation techniques. In the second intervention, they watched short clips that dealt with how emotionally manipulative rhetoric is used to deceive. In the third one, the participants played the free browser game Bad News. They assumed the role of a fake news producer left to work out how and why common misinformation methods are used.<\/p>\n
All the interventions emphasised common misinformation tactics, such as using emotional language to shape opinions or displaying flawed logic so that false claims look persuasive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important that the effects of the inoculation interventions were nearly the same for videos, games, and text-based material,\u201d explained co-author Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol in the UK. \u201cThis makes it much easier to roll out inoculation at scale and in a broad range of contexts to boost people\u2019s skills in recognizing when they are being misled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following these interventions, the subjects were better able to spot misleading stories, but only for a limited time if they didn\u2019t receive a reminder or refresher. This is where the boosters came in, in the form of short summaries or reminders of what the participants had previously learned. These so-called booster shots honed the skills in detecting and resisting misinformation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first study that systematically explores how long the effects of these modern inoculation interventions actually last, why they decay over time, and most importantly, how we can remedy their effect decay,\u201d Maertens told \u2018CNN\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New research has established a different approach to help people resist misinformation online. Misleading content spreads online faster than you can say\u2026 misinformation. Today\u2019s digital landscape is rampant with misleading stories and half-truths. Falsehoods spread much faster than facts. \u201cMisinformation is a threat to society and the functioning of democracies worldwide,\u201d caution the authors of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_scj_primary_category_id":130,"_scj_featured":true,"_scj_featured_from":"","_scj_featured_until":"","_scj_featured_order":160,"_scj_visibility_class":"current","_scj_layout_family":"standard","_scj_article_style":"","_scj_display_overrides":[],"_scj_intro_image_id":19598,"_scj_intro_alt":"Study on psychological booster shots to combat misinformation","_scj_intro_caption":"","_scj_intro_class":"","_scj_intro_float":"","_scj_full_image_id":19598,"_scj_full_alt":"Study on psychological booster shots to combat misinformation","_scj_full_caption":"","_scj_full_class":"","_scj_full_float":"","_scj_media_type":"","_scj_media_provider":"","_scj_media_external_id":"","_scj_media_url":"","_scj_media_poster_id":0,"_scj_media_width":0,"_scj_media_height":0,"_scj_media_aspect_ratio":"","_scj_media_description":"","_scj_gallery_items":[],"_scj_related_post_ids":[],"_scj_additional_authors":[],"scj_layout_family":"standard","scj_media_provider":"","scj_media_url":"","scj_full_caption":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[2322,2320,2319,2323,2321],"class_list":["post-19599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-cognitive-psychology","tag-digital-literacy","tag-misinformation","tag-online-safety","tag-oxford-university"],"yoast_head":"\n