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CAMBRIDGE/Bristol, Aug. 29 (Conversation) From the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, misinformation is rife around the world. Many tools are designed to help people spot misinformation. The problem with most of them is that they are difficult to deliver at scale.
But we may have found a solution. In our new study, we designed and tested five short videos that “pre-mask” viewers in order to shield them from the deceptive and manipulative techniques that are often used to mislead people online. Our study is the largest of its kind and the first to test this intervention on YouTube. These videos were viewed by 5 million people and 1 million of them.
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We found that these videos can help people spot misinformation not only in controlled experiments, but also in the real world. Watching one of our videos with a YouTube ad improves YouTube users’ ability to identify misinformation.
As opposed to pre-debunking, debunking (or fact-checking) misinformation has several problems. It is often difficult to determine what the truth is. Fact-checking also often fails to reach the people most likely to believe misinformation, and getting people to accept fact-checking can be challenging, especially if people have a strong sense of political identity.
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Research shows that posting fact-checks online doesn’t fully reverse the effects of misinformation, a phenomenon known as the carryover effect. So far, researchers have struggled to find a solution that could quickly reach millions.
great idea
Vaccination theory is the concept that you can build psychological resistance to attempts to manipulate you, much like a medical vaccine is a weakened version of a pathogen that prompts your immune system to produce antibodies. Pre-masking interventions are largely based on this theory.
Most models focus on offsetting individual instances of misinformation, such as posts about climate change. In recent years, however, researchers, including ourselves, have explored how to insulate people from the techniques and tropes behind much of the misinformation we see online. Such techniques include using emotional language to provoke anger and fear, or scapegoating individuals and groups for problems over which they have little control.
Online games like Cranky Uncle and Bad News were the first attempts at this pre-masking method. This approach has several advantages. You don’t have to act as an arbiter of truth because you don’t have to fact-check specific claims you see online.
It allows you to sidestep emotional discussions about the credibility of news sources. Perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to know what misinformation will spread next.
scalable approach
But not everyone has the time or motivation to play games – so we partnered with Jigsaw (Google’s research arm) to develop a solution to reach more of them. Our team produced five videos, each less than two minutes in length, designed to shield viewers from different manipulation techniques or logical fallacies.
As part of this project, we launched a website where people can watch and download these videos.
We first tested their effects in the lab. We conducted six experiments (approximately 6,400 participants in total) in which people watched one of our videos or an unrelated control video of cryoburn. Then, within 24 hours of viewing the video, they were asked to evaluate a series of (unpublished) examples of social media content that either used or did not use misinformation techniques. We found that people who watched our pre-masked videos were less susceptible to manipulation than control group participants.
But results from lab studies don’t necessarily translate to the real world. Therefore, we also conducted a field study on YouTube, the second most-visited website in the world (owned by Google), to test the effectiveness of video interventions there.
For this study, we focused on US YouTube users over the age of 18 who had previously viewed political content on the platform. We ran an ad campaign with two of our videos, showing them to about 1 million YouTube users. Next, we used YouTube’s BrandLift engagement tool to ask people who watched the preloaded video to answer a multiple-choice question.
The question assessed their ability to identify manipulation techniques in news headlines. We also had a control group who answered the same survey questions but did not see the pre-made video. We found that the pre-masking group was 5-10% better at correctly identifying misinformation than the control group, suggesting that this approach improves resilience even in a distracting environment like YouTube.
Our videos cost less than 4p per view (this will include YouTube advertising). As a result of this research, Google will run an ad campaign using similar videos in September 2022. The campaign will be carried out in Poland and the Czech Republic to combat disinformation about refugees in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
When you’re trying to build resilience, avoid telling people too directly what to believe is helpful, as this can trigger something called a psychological reaction. Reaction means that people feel their freedom to make decisions is threatened, causing them to get stuck and reject new information. Vaccination theory is about empowering people to decide for themselves what to believe.
At times, the spread of conspiracy theories and false information online can be overwhelming. But our research shows that it is possible to turn things around. The more social media platforms work with independent scientists to design, test, and implement scalable, evidence-based solutions, the better our chances will be to insulate society from misinformation. (conversation)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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