Established Academic 2024

What is the research?

From violent riots fuelled by online misinformation to deadly lynchings in India to viral misinformation during pandemics and elections worldwide, misinformation is undermining public health and democracy and one the defining issue of our time.

The traditional response to misinformation has been to debunk it after fake news has already spread. Pioneering a completely new approach, Professor van der Linden and his team theorized it may be possible to 'prebunk' rather than 'debunk' through psychological inoculation.

Just as our immune system is activated by the administration of a weakened or inactivated strain of a virus (the vaccine) to confer protection against future infection, the team hypothesized it may work the same with the human brain: By preemptively exposing people to weakened doses of falsehoods - or the techniques used to produce misinformation - and by refuting and deconstructing them in advance, people can build up cognitive immunity against fake news.

Following the laboratory research, a way to translate the scientific theory of mental inoculation into the real-world was required. The team's first project was the creation of a public impact game known as Bad News, the first fake news game of its kind to simulate a social media feed and inoculate the public against common misinformation tactics (e.g., polarizing headlines, use of emotions to manipulate people, conspiratorial thinking, and impersonating official authorities).

The game went viral on social media attracting millions of players which also led to many thousands of people opting into scientific research by having us assess their performance pre and post gameplay, finding an average ~25% boost in their ability to recognize misinformation. This was not only a success in terms of demonstrated public impact but it also generated unprecedented abilities to do large-scale research using "big data".

The success of the game led to a formal collaboration with the UK Government, the Foreign Office translated Bad News into every major language in the world allowing for large cross-cultural evaluations.

During the start of the pandemic, the team created a short novel game known as GoViral(!) with the UK Cabinet Office which tackled pandemic misinformation. This was the first widespread implementation of inoculation research in a public health campaign and thee approach became part of the World Health Organization's "stop the spread" campaign and the United Nation's "verified" campaign reaching over 200 million people globally.

Alongside this, the team have been working with Dept. of Homeland Security in the U.S to develop Harmony Square to to safeguard U.S. Presidential elections from foreign interference.

Working with Google, prebunking videos were inserted in the non-skippable ad spaces on YouTube to inoculate users against manipulation before people are exposed which was then scaled worldwide to reach 200 million people.

The Google impact also led to the publication of a free public guide in collaboration with BBC Media Action to illustrate how others can use and implement the approach.