Disinformation Inoculation

Short animations giving viewers a taste of the tactics behind misinformation can help to "inoculate" people against harmful content on social media when deployed in YouTube's advert slot, according to a major online experiment led by the University of Cambridge.

This "pre-bunking" strategy pre-emptively exposes people to tropes at the root of malicious propaganda, so they can better identify online falsehoods regardless of subject matter.

The findings, published in Science Advances, come from seven experiments involving a total of almost 30,000 participants -- including the first "real world field study" of inoculation theory on a social media platform -- and show a single viewing of a film clip increases awareness of misinformation.

The videos introduce concepts from the "misinformation playbook," illustrated with relatable examples from film and TV such as Family Guy or, in the case of false dichotomies, Star Wars ("Only a Sith deals in absolutes").

Lead author Dr Jon Roozenbeek from Cambridge's SDML describes the team's videos as "source agnostic," avoiding biases people have about where information is from, and how it chimes -- or not -- with what they already believe.

"Our interventions make no claims about what is true or a fact, which is often disputed. They are effective for anyone who does not appreciate being manipulated," he said.

"The inoculation effect was consistent across liberals and conservatives. It worked for people with different levels of education, and different personality types. This is the basis of a general inoculation against misinformation."

"We've shown that video ads as a delivery method of prebunking messages can be used to reach millions of people, potentially before harmful narratives take hold," Goldberg said.

"Fact-checkers can only rebut a fraction of the falsehoods circulating online. We need to teach people to recognise the misinformation playbook, so they understand when they are being misled."

Researchers say that such a recognition increase could be game changing if dramatically scaled up across social platforms -- something that would be cheap to do. The average cost for each view of significant length was the tiny sum of US$0.05.