New research has established a different approach to help people resist misinformation online.
Misleading content spreads online faster than you can say… misinformation. Today’s digital landscape is rampant with misleading stories and half-truths. Falsehoods spread much faster than facts. “Misinformation is a threat to society and the functioning of democracies worldwide,” caution the authors of a study presented in the journal ‘Nature Communications’. “It is shown to have impacted a wide variety of critical issues such as vaccine uptake, support for mitigation of anthropogenic global warming, and political elections. Furthermore, misinformation has also been linked to real-world violence, such as mob violence in India and the burning of 5G installations.” But what’s more disturbing is that most people don’t know how to effectively deal with misinformation. So how do we combat it?
A research team led by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom (UK) introduced the “psychological booster shot” – a targeted memory technique to protect ourselves or keep from getting fooled. “Our research shows that just as medical booster shots enhance immunity, psychological booster shots can strengthen people’s resistance to misinformation over time,” stated lead researcher Rakoen Maertens from the Department of Experimental Psychology in a news release. “By integrating memory-boosting techniques into public education and digital literacy...
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