‘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.

This is the Paywall

We pay our journalists to investigate stories that matter. So we make some of our best articles and investigations available exclusively to paying readers. This is one of those articles; to read it, sign in or subscribe.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Get access to the Byline Times Digital Edition and read this article now

It costs £3.95/month or £39.95/year
Find out more and compare ways to read Byline Times

Get access now