The Fake News Game simulates propaganda tactics such as impersonation, and awards badges once a round is completed.

The Fake News Game simulates propaganda tactics such as impersonation, and awards badges once a round is completed. DROG / www.fakenewsgame.org

How to Inoculate the Public Against Fake News

When people were given a toolbox of deceptive techniques and told to “play Russian troll,” they learned to reject disinformation.

Friday’s indictment of 13 Russians on charges of attempting to defraud the public and influence the U.S. presidential election shows that that the United States remains vulnerable to what the indictment calls “information warfare” but what others call simply fake news. A new research paper released Monday from two Cambridge University researchers shows how to counteract it.

Once a person accepts an untruth, dislodging it can be very difficult, especially if the person’s online social group is pushing that piece of fake news. Some research has suggested that this is because the emotional need for acceptance goes on to influence higher-order rational thinking.

A broad cross-section of research suggests that the best defense against misinformation is to inoculate people against it — that is, by exposing people to the precise fake news they are likely to be targeted with. This is why Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 French presidential campaign set up honeypot email accounts to attract the Russian hackers backing Putin ally Marine Le Pen (a fact Defense One broke in December, 2016). When Macron’s emails leaked and Russian-linked social media accounts began to spread news of the leaks—and disinformation about their contents—the Macron campaign was able to easily discredit the efforts. The operation backfired.

“Inoculation is the key to countering disinformation,” said George Mason University researcher John Cook, whose work on inoculation theory was cited by the Cambridge paper. “There are a number of ways to approach inoculating people against disinformation. For example, general inoculation warns people against the general threat that they might be misinformed. However, this can potentially backfire by making people cynical about all forms of information, eroding belief in facts as well as falsehoods.” When examining misinformation used in the climate change debate, Cook found “that more targeted inoculations don't reduce trust in scientists, indicating that we need to be more strategic in how we counter disinformation.”

But most of the time, it’s difficult or impossible to anticipate precisely what sort of misinformation or lies an adversary might spread. Sometimes, it’s unknown even to that very adversary.

Consider the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, the group targeted by the FBI in its Friday indictment. The Washington Post, who talked to former IRA employees, found that the trolls didn’t so much follow scripts as themes as they produced content, events, blog posts, and chatroom comments. They created content continuously and extemporaneously, in a process of never-ending experimentation.

One former employee described how “he and his colleagues would engage in a group troll in which they would pretend to hold different views of the same subject and argue about it in public online comments. Eventually, one of the group would declare he had been convinced by the others. ‘Those are the kinds of plays we had to act out,’ he said.”

Different workers had different assignments, and, as the indictments note, assumed highly different personas to spread misinformation.

So how do you warn potential victims about what fake news they might see when the enemy, at least some of the time, is improvising?

The Cambridge researchers developed a game to help people understand, broadly, how fake news works by having users play trolls and create misinformation. By “placing news consumers in the shoes of (fake) news producers, they are not merely exposed to small portions of misinformation,” the researchers write in their accompanying paper.

In the game, players assumed various roles, somewhat like the St. Petersburg troll factory. Among the roles was “denier”: someone “who strives to make a topic look small and insignificant,” such as people who claim that the Russian efforts to undermine governments around the world are either made up or insignificant. Another was “conspiracy theorist”: someone “who distrusts any kind of official mainstream narrative and wants their audience to follow suit;” such as a trafficker in fictions such as Pizzagate.

Most importantly, the players had to use common tactics in misinformation and rhetoric, such as hyperbole, or exaggeration; whataboutism, or discrediting news or individuals via accusations of hypocrisy; and “conspiratorial reasoning,” defined as “theorizing that small groups are working in secret against the common good,” which tracks with the increasingly popular and yet still baseless theory that the FBI is using the Russian investigation to stage a coup.

Did the game successfully inoculate players against fake news? The researchers had 57 people play the game, adopting different personas and using different tactics associated with misinformation and persuasion. As compared to a control group, the players were much more skeptical of fake news articles they were subsequently shown. And this remained true no matter what the player’s political leanings.

“We asked participants — both in the control and treatment group—  how reliable they judged their [counterfactual] article to be,” said researcher Jon Roozenbeek. “We also asked them how persuasive they thought it was. Participants could answer on a scale from 1 to 7, and what we found is that the treatment group rated their article significantly less reliable and persuasive vis-à-vis the control group. This is, of course, an imperfect measure. Unfortunately, our pilot study gave us no opportunity to explore these questions in a deeper manner. But we will keep running studies like this in the future, so more data should be coming up.”

The study suggests that there may actually be multiple methods for countering disinformation, propaganda, and fake news from governments like Vladimir Putin’s.

Said Cook of the Cambridge paper: “Roozenbeek and van der Linden propose an exciting novel approach: ‘active inoculation’, by having students learn the techniques of fake news by creating their own fake news article. This active approach gives students the critical thinking tools to see through other fake news articles: a sorely needed skill these days.”

He said, “Another way to inoculate people against misinformation is through ‘technocognition’: technological solutions based on psychological principles. The ‘fake news game’ is potentially a powerful technocognition solution, as the concept could work well as an online game where any number of players can actively learn how to see through the techniques of fake news.”

Whether political leaders or social networks to use such strategies, or even advocate for their use, remains very much in question.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.