The Turnstone: talking about vaccines #31
The Turnstone: talking about vaccines #31
Defence against the dark arts (2 minute read)
Two weeks ago, I shared resources to help you fight climate misinformation, by inoculating yourself against the techniques of science denial. Those resources were specifically aimed at fighting climate misinformation. Here, I share some more general resources to help you inoculate your mind, and the minds of those around you, against misinformation on a range of topics, including vaccines.
Introduction to inoculation
The following video features Sander van der Linden, an expert in inoculation against misinformation who is known to his Cambridge University colleagues as the “defence against the dark arts teacher”. He explains what sparked his interest about inoculating the mind, talks about the results of his research and outlines where his research is going next (7 minute video).
The Vaccine for Fake News - YouTube
The following article is also from van der Linden and his colleagues. It also talks about the research on pre-bunking and includes two videos developed for YouTube to help protect people against the techniques of misinformation. (5 minute read, 7 minute audio and two 90 second videos).
In a wonderful piece of circularity, vaccine researchers have looked to climate change researchers to see what lessons they might learn about how to deal with misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. And what they learned from climate change researchers was… inoculation (6 minute read and 9 minute video).
Climate Change and Vaccines: Tackling Misinformation (vaccineacceptance.org)
And here is another game aimed at helping inoculate you against misinformation. This game isn’t as slick as the Cranky Uncle game but it covers different content, so is well worth a look (10 minute game).
Bad News - Play the fake news game! (getbadnews.com)
Inoculation videos
One of the articles I mention above talks about a series of videos which are played as ads on YouTube, aimed at helping people recognise the manipulation techniques used to suck them in to believing misinformation. Here’s the whole series of videos. Share them on your social media and do your bit to help inoculate your friends and family (each video less than 2 minutes).
Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: Scapegoating - YouTube
Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: Ad Hominem Attacks - YouTube
Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: False Dichotomies - YouTube
Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: Incoherence - YouTube
Prebunking Manipulation Techniques: Emotional Language (v2) - YouTube
What about people who already believe misinformation?
The following video talks in more depth about how to tackle misinformation on a more personal level. It describes how to use techniques based on motivational interviewing to reach people who believe and share misinformation. The approaches that they are talking about are still under investigation, so I haven’t found a lot of good resources explaining them online, apart from this video, which is pretty long. However, it’s well worth a look (32 minute video).
Such great resources, Melanie! I'm sharing your post via all my socials in hopes to spread the word widely.