NEWS: How “Prebunking” Misinformation Works, by Will Croxton, published by 60 Minutes Overtime (Available Here) 

60 Minutes Overtime correspondent Lesley Stahl interviews Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at Cambridge University. He explains the risks of people interacting with and sharing misleading or false information online. Through educational programs he developed with a variety of partners, Van der Linden shows how he has promoted an inoculation technique known as prebunking which helps people identify and build up resistance to misinformation.

RESEARCH: Inoculation Reduces Misinformation: Experimental Evidence From Multidimensional Interventions In Brazil, by Frederico Batista Pereira, Natalia S. Bueno, Felipe Nunes, and Nara Pavão, published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science (Available Here)

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil investigated the effectiveness of preemptive interventions against misinformation. Using two field experiments, one of which was conducted in partnership with Brazil’s main newspaper, they found that inoculation reduces peoples’ propensity to accept false rumors. This study provides academic support into different strategies that could be used to combat misinformation.