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If you’ve ever been fooled by oversimplified or misleading claims online, there is more that you can do to protect yourself, a new study finds.
Misinformation training can be an effective tool for helping people identify and reject fake news in as little as one month.
“This is the first study that systematically explores how long the effects of these modern inoculation interventions actually last, why they decay over time, and most importantly, how we can remedy their effect decay,” said Dr. Rakoen Maertens, lead study author and Juliana Cuyler Matthews Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, involved more than 11,000 participants who underwent one of three types of training designed to help detect misinformation.
The training methods included reviewing a short article to identify misinformation tactics, watching a brief video demonstrating common misinformation strategies or playing a game in which participants created misleading news to better understand how misinformation is generated.
Researchers aimed to measure not only how well participants remembered the training, but also how effectively they could identify fake news and whether they then felt motivated to safeguard themselves from misleading information.
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Participants were tested immediately after training, again after 10 days and finally 30 days later, to evaluate whether their ability to spot misinformation survived over time, particularly in response to misleading social media posts.
People who received any of the three methods of misinformation training performed better than those who did not, the results showed.
Participants who read the short article saw the longest effects — lasting around one month — which was significantly longer than those who tried gamified or video-based formats, the effects of which only lasted around two weeks. However, memory retention proved to be the key factor in helping participants resist misleading news.
Those who felt a greater sense of threat from misinformation were more likely to engage with and remember the training, but “booster” interventions to remind participants of the content they previously learned in all of the training were still essential for fully processing and retaining what they learned.
“The combined model (suggesting that) memory and motivation help sustain memories makes sense because we remember things that often have a high emotional resonance,” said Dr. Erik Nisbet, Owen L. Coon Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication and the founding director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy in the School of Communication at Northwestern University in Illinois. Nisbet was not involved in the study.
To ensure the long-term impact of the training, though, consistent reminders after all three forms of intervention were necessary in helping participants retain the information and continue to reject false claims.
Researchers have been studying inoculation — a process used to resist persuasive messages — for decades. However, this study dove deeper into the concept of “pre-bunking” compared with debunking, the authors said.
Unlike debunking, which tends to be highly ineffective because false information can still influence behaviors and attitudes, pre-bunking helps individuals build an immunity to manipulation before they are exposed to false claims, Nisbet said.
All of the inoculation interventions seemed to work across all demographic groups, according to Maertens.
The continuing effects of the training depend on how long people want the intervention results to last and how memorable the initial intervention was to them.
Receiving a “booster” or reminder one week after the initial inoculation might result in misinformation detection that lasts up to one month, and with another booster at the four-week mark, the effects could last months, according to the study.
“Although it has not been tested, based on the model presented in the paper, we could expect that after 3 to 5 boosters, some of the effectiveness may remain for more than a year, or even multiple years,” Maertens said via email.
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While it’s promising to know that people can unlearn misinformation-related behaviors, Nisbet cautioned that this research is unlikely to play a significant role at a national level.
“At least in the United States, there is no political will to either fund or run these (misinformation or disinformation) campaigns,” Nisbet said.
However, lower-level efforts are possible. For example, the Illinois General Assembly passed a public act in 2021 requiring media literacy instruction in public high school curriculums, which includes training on evaluating the trustworthiness of sources.
Nisbet also encouraged people to check out local resources to find others who might be interested in fighting against online misinformation.
If you’re looking to reduce the risk of falling for misinformation, there are steps you can take independently.
Nisbet advised people to slow down when they encounter a new story online and process the information carefully before reacting emotionally.
Many misinformation campaigns aim to create distrust and fuel polarization, Maertens emphasized.
However, since open-minded thinking plays a critical role in detecting disinformation, he suggests reflecting on content that has made you feel angry toward others. Then, consider reaching out to those individuals or groups to engage on a more personal level.
For an entertainment-oriented solution, test your knowledge of misinformation online and chat about it with others you know to see how your results compare. Maertens even encourages people to download apps designed to help identify misleading claims and sharpen your misinformation detection abilities.
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