Tech giant Google is testing out “prebunking” strategies aimed at “inoculating people against manipulation” and misinformation online.
In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers from Google and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom teamed up to conduct experiments that involved five short videos aimed at “inoculating people against manipulation techniques commonly used in misinformation.”
The study, titled, “Psychological Inoculation Improves Resilience Against Misinformation on Social Media,” involved nearly 30,000 participants. Other authors included researchers at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and the University of Western Australia.
Researchers say the manipulation techniques commonly used in misinformation are “emotionally manipulative language, incoherence, false dichotomies, scapegoating, and ad hominem attacks.”…