The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Shock Jocks from their Edge Lords.
Can you tackle online misinformation if you get in early? The answer to this is yes, according to a new study, into how people can be ‘inoculated’ against conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’. We explore the implications of this in our Engagement Hub.
And of course, there’s the emporium of fake lies and true facts that is Charlie’s Attic, this week revealing the most ‘pub-ified’ British monarch since Alfred the Great.
We were fascinated by this recent article for The Conversation, exploring whether you can ‘inoculate’ people against disinformation. The article is based on research written up in more detail here and here. At its core is the notion of ‘pre-bunking’ falsehoods. Rather than ‘de-bunking’ – which explains retrospectively why misinformation is incorrect, and which often falls flat – ‘pre-bunking’ is designed to make people less vulnerable to mis-information in the first place. Social media users are given the tools to cotton on quickly when others are trying to manipulate them.
The research behind it uses videos like this one. Circulated as YouTube ads, they unpack how techniques such as using emotive language or providing binary choices can draw you in. The authors of the work explain that ‘Inoculation Theory’ is about “empowering people to make their own decisions about what to believe.” It works, they say, because it does not confront people with an alternative ‘truth’ or tell them they’re wrong – which can make them hunker down. Instead, it gives people the wherewithal to make their own decisions.
There are lessons here for the world of community engagement. Low trust in local authorities is often exacerbated by forms of misinformation and hearsay, and councils’ efforts to debunk these things can backfire. Inoculation theory represents a savvier approach than conventional myth-busting.
In our experience, conspiracy theory often acts as an imitation of critical thinking, encouraging people to ‘see through’ the things they are told. The idea of ‘pre-bunking’ acts as a corrective to this, it seems. It could therefore work well for audiences who often want to make decisions for themselves, but feel unable to do so.
Ultimately, low trust is a huge part of the present challenge which democracies face. Hannah Arendt famously said that “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is…[a] people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between the true and the false…no longer exist.” Misinformation on social media has enflamed the propensity for this situation to occur. If ‘pre-bunking’ offers a way of equipping citizens to spot conspiracies and game news early, then it can only be a good thing.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the tinfoil hat at the end of your voyage into fantasy:
