A series of studies found that viewers who were presented with short, informational videos about misinformation intended to "inoculate" them against harmful social media content were less likely to share it with others.
There is a logo on a phone.
Five 90-second videos were created by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol to teach people how to spot misinformation.
The study was funded by an arm ofAlphabet that aims to develop technological solutions to societal problems and has faced scrutiny from critics who say the platform makes harmful content.
After watching the videos researchers asked participants to identify manipulation techniques, and compared to a control group "inoculated" people were more than twice as good at identifying the techniques.
When people in the U.S. were exposed to one of the inoculation videos, their abilities improved.
The study found that psychological inoculation can be scaled across hundreds of millions of users.
When debunking conspiracy theories feels like a personal attack on the people who hold those beliefs, pre-bunking may be more effective than classic fact-checking.
There are five common manipulation techniques and each video focused on one of them. You can see the clips here.
At the end of the month, there will be a campaign on multiple platforms targeting users in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
For several years, social media companies have focused on fighting the spread of misinformation on their platforms, particularly as it relates to political news, like the results of the 2020 presidential election. The circulation of misinformation about abortion has become a problem for platforms.
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