Inoculating against the spread of Islamophobic and radical-Islamist disinformation

Abstract

We report the results of a preregistered study that tested the effectiveness of inoculating participants against Islamophobic and radical-Islamist disinformation. Participants in the experimental (inoculation) condition watched a video that explained common rhetorical markers of radical-Islamist and Islamophobic disinformation that had been identified in an analysis of YouTube content. The information was presented in a neutral context not involving Islam and focused on analysis of the misleading argumentation. The control group watched a video about an unrelated topic. Participants were then exposed to target videos with “gateway” content that constituted an entry point to potential Islamist or Islamophobic radicalization. Both videos contained numerous items of disinformation. Participants then answered a variety of questions such as how likely they were to share the video, their level of agreement, and their perceived accuracy of the video. Participants who had received the inoculation displayed less agreement with the video content, perceived the video as less reliable, and were less likely to share it in comparison with participants in the control group. The study provides support for the use of argument-based inoculation in combatting extremist messages.

Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation

“…The game may be implemented as part of media literacy curricula in schools, or played as a standalone game in-browser. In addition, the game may be deployed in conjunction with other anti-misinformation tools such as videos [ 54 ], ‘prebunking’ infographics [ 17 ], accuracy-based interventions [ 8 , 47 ] or media literacy interventions [ 7 ], to improve resilience against online misinformation at scale.…”

Testing the Efficacy of Attitudinal Inoculation Videos to Enhance COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance: Quasi-Experimental Intervention Trial

“…The intervention videos were designed to protect people against being misled by flawed argumentation used in common online mis- and disinformation, such as conspiracy theories [ 57 , 58 ]. In practice, this means that watching a video with an inoculation message and a weakened microdose of manipulation techniques allows viewers to discern more readily subsequent misinformation that makes use of similar flawed argumentation techniques.…”

Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions

“…They did not focus on propaganda because they argued that testing inoculation messages in the context of cultural truisms represented a “cleaner” test of the theory, as people have generally not been exposed to counterarguments against these beliefs. Although the initial focus of inoculation research largely remained on cultural truisms, researchers have now found that people can be inoculated on a wide range of controversial issues where individuals hold different and even polarized beliefs, ranging from climate change (van der Linden et al 2017) and GMOs (genetically modified organisms) (Wood 2007) to extremism (Braddock 2019; Lewandowsky and Yesilada 2021) and conspiracy theories (Banas and Miller 2013). A meta-analysis found that the average effect size of inoculation interventions across forty studies with more than ten thousand participants was d = 0.43 (Banas and Rains 2010), commonly interpreted as a medium effect, and suggested by Cohen (1988) to be one “large enough to be visible to the naked eye” (p. 26).…”