How to inoculate voters against disinformation
Advice for fighting propaganda and manipulation this election season from social psychologist Sander van der Linden
With Vice President Kamala Harris having all but secured the Democratic nomination — and bringing renewed fire to the campaign, the wave of misinformation has started in earnest, with a mounting pile of invented accusations from the merely outrageous to the utterly ridiculous already being leveled against the candidate, the party, and the process.
Harris has already been doing a commendable job of calling it as she sees it, but manipulation of public opinion is likely to remain a serious threat throughout the election cycle. And With some of the most important sources of information online in the hands of arguably bad actors, the Democrats must be prepared for attacks — with a real plan to prebunk (not retroactively debunk) disinformation. There’s some precedent already, but the preparation adn education needs to continue.
As disinformation researcher Sander van der Linden told us when we spoke earlier this year:
The best example is from the Biden administration, which prebunked the Russian invasion of Ukraine by telling the American public and NATO that there were going to be fake videos of Ukrainian soldiers on Russian soil, and it's going to be a pretext for a potential invasion, but you should know that these are actors, and this is all fake. And this is Russia trying to come up with a reason to invade Ukraine. And I think that was one of the most effective real-world examples of prebunking that we've seen. We didn't design this inoculation, but it followed the format.
And for more of our thoughts on how the Harris campaign can win in November, just click on the link below.
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