Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation

Anastasia Kozyreva; Philipp Lorenz-Spreen; Stefan M Herzog; Ullrich K H Ecker; Stephan Lewandowsky; Ralph Hertwig; Ayesha Ali; Joe Bak-Coleman; Sarit Barzilai; Melisa Basol; Adam J Berinsky; Cornelia Betsch; John Cook; Lisa K Fazio; Michael Geers; Andrew M Guess; Haifeng Huang; Horacio Larreguy; Rakoen Maertens; Folco Panizza; Gordon Pennycook; David G Rand; Steve Rathje; Jason Reifler; Philipp Schmid; Mark Smith; Briony Swire-Thompson; Paula Szewach; Sander van der Linden; Sam Wineburg

doi:10.1038/s41562-024-01881-0

Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation

Nat Hum Behav. 2024 May 13. doi: 10.1038/s41562-024-01881-0. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Anastasia Kozyreva¹, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen², Stefan M Herzog², Ullrich K H Ecker³, Stephan Lewandowsky^{4

5}, Ralph Hertwig², Ayesha Ali⁶, Joe Bak-Coleman⁷, Sarit Barzilai⁸, Melisa Basol⁹, Adam J Berinsky¹⁰, Cornelia Betsch^{11

12}, John Cook¹³, Lisa K Fazio¹⁴, Michael Geers^{2

15}, Andrew M Guess¹⁶, Haifeng Huang¹⁷, Horacio Larreguy¹⁸, Rakoen Maertens¹⁹, Folco Panizza²⁰, Gordon Pennycook^{21

22}, David G Rand²³, Steve Rathje²⁴, Jason Reifler²⁵, Philipp Schmid^{11

12

26}, Mark Smith²⁷, Briony Swire-Thompson²⁸, Paula Szewach^{25

29}, Sander van der Linden⁹, Sam Wineburg²⁷

Affiliations

¹ Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. kozyreva@mpib-berlin.mpg.de.
² Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
³ School of Psychological Science & Public Policy Institute, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
⁴ School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.
⁶ Department of Economics, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan.
⁷ Craig Newmark Center, School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
⁸ Department of Learning and Instructional Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
⁹ Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁰ Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹¹ Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany.
¹² Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany.
¹³ Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
¹⁴ Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
¹⁶ Department of Politics and School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Political Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
¹⁸ Departments of Economics and Political Science, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
¹⁹ Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
²⁰ IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy.
²¹ Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
²² Department of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
²³ Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
²⁴ Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
²⁵ Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
²⁶ Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
²⁷ Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
²⁸ Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
²⁹ Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain.

PMID: 38740990
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01881-0

Abstract

The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. One approach to mitigating the effect of misinformation focuses on individual-level interventions, equipping policymakers and the public with essential tools to curb the spread and influence of falsehoods. Here we introduce a toolbox of individual-level interventions for reducing harm from online misinformation. Comprising an up-to-date account of interventions featured in 81 scientific papers from across the globe, the toolbox provides both a conceptual overview of nine main types of interventions, including their target, scope and examples, and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions, including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The nine types of interventions covered are accuracy prompts, debunking and rebuttals, friction, inoculation, lateral reading and verification strategies, media-literacy tips, social norms, source-credibility labels, and warning and fact-checking labels.

Publication types

Review