Prebunking

General description
 * (Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., 2019) Prebunking: "preemptive ways of mitigating the problem (Cook, Lewandowsky, and Ecker, 2017; van der Linden et al., 2017b; Roozenbeek and van der Linden, 2018). The main thrust of this research is to prevent false narratives from taking root in memory in the first place, focusing specifically on the process of preemptive debunking or so-called “prebunking”.”
 * (Ecker, U. et al. (2022)) "Prebunking seeks to help people recognize and resist subsequently encountered misinformation, even if it is novel."
 * (Van der Linden (2020) ) "Several recent advances, in particular, are worth noting. The first is that the field has moved from ‘narrow-spectrum’ or ‘fact-based’ inoculation to ‘broad-spectrum’ or ‘technique-based’ immunization. ... A second advance surrounds the application of active versus passive inoculation. Whereas the traditional inoculation process is passive insofar as people pre-emptively receive the specific refutations from the experimenter, the process of active inoculation encourages people to generate their own ‘antibodies’."

Interventions - Birds aren't real - Peter McIndoe (CBS) - Hasselt bestaat niet (HLN)
 * (Ecker, U. et al. (2022)) "An inoculation intervention combines two elements. The first element is warning recipients of the threat of misleading persuasion. For example, a person could be warned that many claims about climate change are false and intentionally misleading. The second element is identifying the techniques used to mislead or the fallacies that underlie the false arguments to refute forthcoming misinformation".
 * Humor

Prebunking Impact Measurement

Assumptions
 * (Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., 2019) Preemptive intervention “draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarising people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation.”
 * (Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., 2019) “Originally pioneered by McGuire in the 1960s (McGuire and Papageorgis, 1961, 1962; McGuire, 1964; Compton, 2013), inoculation theory draws on a biological metaphor: just as injections containing a weakened dose of a virus can trigger antibodies in the immune system to confer resistance against future infection, the same can be achieved with information by cultivating mental antibodies against misinformation. In other words, by exposing people to a weakened version of a misleading argument, and by preemptively refuting this argument, attitudinal resistance can be conferred against future deception attempts. Meta-analytic research has found that inoculation messages are generally effective at conferring resistance against persuasion attempts (Banas and Rains, 2010).”
 * (Van der Linden (2020) ) "Inoculation theory operates via two mechanisms, namely (1) motivational threat (a desire to defend oneself from manipulation attacks) and (2) refutational pre-emption or prebunking (pre-exposure to a weakened example of the attack)."
 * (Basol, M. et al., 2020) "recent research has focused on the possibility of a “broad-spectrum vaccine” against misinformation (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2018, 2019). The broad-spectrum approach requires two theoretical innovations; 1) shifting focus away from pre-emptively exposing participants to weakened examples of specific instances of (mis)information to pre-emptively exposing participants to weakened examples of the techniques that underlie the production of most misinformation and 2) revisiting McGuire’s original prediction (McGuire & Papageorgis, 1961) that active inoculation (letting participants generate their own “antibodies”) would be more effective in conferring resistance to persuasion than when participants are provided with a defensive pre-treatment in a passive manner."
 * (Van der Linden (2020) ) "A potential limitation is that, although misinformation tropes are often repeated throughout history ..., inoculation does require at least some advanced knowledge of what misinformation (tactic) people might be exposed to in the future91. In addition, as healthcare workers are being trained to combat misinformation, it is important to avoid confusion in terminology when using psychological inoculation to counter vaccine hesitancy. ... Several other important open questions remain. For example, analogous to recent advances in experimental medicine on the application of therapeutic vaccines—which can still boost immune responses after infection—research has found that inoculation can still protect people from misinformation even when they have already been exposed to misinformation. This makes conceptual sense insofar it may take repeated exposure or a significant amount of time for misinformation to fully persuade people or become integrated with prior attitudes. Yet it remains conceptually unclear at which point therapeutic inoculation transitions into traditional debunking. Moreover, although some comparisons of active versus passive inoculation approaches exist, the evidence base for active forms of inoculation remains relatively small. Similarly, whereas head-to-head studies that compared prebunking to debunking suggest that prevention is indeed better than cure103, more comparative research is needed. Research also finds that it is possible for people to vicariously pass on the inoculation interpersonally or on social media, a process known as ‘post-inoculation talk’, which alludes to the possibility of herd immunity in online communities, yet no social-network simulations currently exist that evaluate the potential of inoculative approaches. Current studies are also based on self-reported sharing of misinformation. Future research will need to evaluate the extent to which inoculation can scale across the population and influence objective news-sharing behavior on social media."

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Prebunking Projects