‘We Need Psychological Herd Immunity to Create a Resilient Social Media Society’

Social psychologist Dr Melisa Basol explains how her work at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab focuses on creating resistance against misinformation through inoculation theory

Looking at how disinformation was tackled in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a lot of research on inoculation theory. This is based on the biological analogy that we can preemptively debunk a virus – misinformation – and build mental antibodies against forms of persuasion that people could encounter in the future.

Applying the theory to the context of social media, rather than going ‘door to door’ and attempting to inoculate every single individual on every single argument on every single topic, we can try to persuade people against the underlying manipulation techniques that allow misinformation narratives to go viral in the first place.

Misinformation spreads faster and further than any other kind of information. Once it’s out, it tends to stick.