“Scientists develop fake news ‘vaccine’ to combat climate change myths”
How is this possible? Well, it seems that in the debate of climate change scientists have seemingly found a cure against the spread of climate change myths.
The article reads “We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.”
A study was done where individuals were subjected to 2 facts- a well-known climate change fact and a fake myth. It was found that when presented consecutively, ‘fake news’ dominated people’s minds.
However, when presented with an “inoculation” — where people were introduced to distortion tactics used by certain groups — as well as a small dose of misinformation and the fact, opinions stayed closer to the truth despite exposure to fake news.
“Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”
This is an optimistic approach as it lacks significant factors of consideration- i.e. how do these ‘scientists’ control how news is consumed? How do they know readers will be able to be exposed to small doses of information and facts?
Nevertheless, this is still a good step in the battle against fake news. What do you think?
-Cecilia
FlakeOnFake 