This upcoming event has some bearing on my day job and is hosted by A Certain University I’m quite familiar with so I will try to spectate some of the proceedings.
This rather insidious-looking session raised many red flags…
13:30-14:00 – Keynote Talk 2: A Psychological Vaccine Against Misinformation (by Professor Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge)
Much like a viral contagion, false information can spread rapidly from one individual to another. Moreover, once lodged in memory, misinformation is difficult to correct. Inoculation theory therefore offers a natural basis for developing a psychological ‘vaccine’ against the spread of fake news and misinformation. Specifically, in a series of randomized lab and field studies we show that it is possible to pre-emptively “immunize” people against disinformation by pre-exposing them to severely weakened doses of the techniques that underlie its production. This psychological process helps people cultivate cognitive antibodies in a simulated social media environment. During the talk, Professor Sander van der Linden will showcase an award-winning real-world intervention (“Bad News”) developed and empirically evaluated in 20 languages—with governments and social media companies—to help citizens around the world recognize and resist unwanted attempts to influence and mislead.