Prebunking
Did you know that research is showing that we can inoculate against information pollution? Seriously. We can train ourselves to spot bad info. It's not terribly hard either. It's about finding fallacies in logic and arguments and evidence that don't make any sense.
Start by heading to the Inoculation Science website. They have some great infromation and ways to teach yourself to start spotting these nefarious bits of garbage. Now, don't get weirded out by the work inoculation--you not going to get a shot or anything like that. You watch some short and playful videos. Or you can play some games. Or both! These simple activites can help you spot information pollution before it starts to manipulate you.
There's a few key ideas they like to point out. Here are ways you can avoid bad information:
Emotional Language: Get people fired up! Then they'll believe anything. Provoking strong emotions can increase the likelihood that information (real or not) will spread. Often it's fearmongering or something to strike sadness in you. Can you remove the strong language and reword it with less emotion? If so, it's manipulation! So watch your heart strings--someone is playing them!
Incoherence: With this one, you'll see two different ideas that try to make a point, and yet if you think about those two ideas, they don't work together or make sense. For example, someone might say, "You don't deserve to go to the mall because you have abnormally large feet." What does one have to do with the other? If someone sounds hypocritical and contradictory, trust your gut and look deeper at their discussion.
False Dichotomies: It's either this or that. Nothing in between. There is very little in life that is truly black or white, and most issues have a lot of gray area. Anyone who speaks strongly of "one way or another," be cautious and dig deeper.
Scapegoating: You may have heard of this one. Here some group or maybe an individual is blamed for something. But it's hard and usually quite unfair to blame complex issues on one person or agency. And you probably don't like being blamed for problems you didn't create, right? So if you see the blame game being played, dig deeper.
Ad hominem attacks: Oh, this one sounds tricky, but it's not so bad; in fact, it's kind of like scapegoating. Imagine two people arguing. One says, "I wish people would compost and recycle more." The second person says, "That's dumb because you're a tree-hugging hippie!" First of all, there's nothing wrong with hugging trees or being a hippy. But also, that's not a good argument for not wanting to compost or recycle--it's throwing an argument in someone's face and attacking the person. There's no real argument there, and it's usually used to distract from the issue at hand. Watch out for personal attacks.
What forms of logical fallicies do you see in the image to the right?
Some Activities:
Inoculation Science has great games as well as some great videos to get playing and exploring.
Cranky Uncle--the online game! Learn about different ways you might be manipulated. Also available for your cell phones.
Infromation Pollution: What's the Worst? Try this short activity best for groups. Learn about different types of information pollution by trying to rank them from the terrible to terriblerest. That's not a word. But you get the idea.
Information Pollution: Personifying that Pollution: Okay, this is a funny little assignment where you try to assign characters to verious types of information pollution.
Information Literacy Kahoot, Vol. 1: Try this short six question Kahoot to test your skills.
Information Literacy Kahoot, Vol 2: Hey! Another short Kahoot, another six questions to see how well informationally literate you are!
Information Literacy Kahoot: The Mega Kahoot! This is a bigger Kahoot that combines the previous Kahoots with other questions about media literacy.
Prebunking Slides #1: Here are five bits fromt the media. Can you tell if they're good, questionable or garbage? Contact Mr. Dixon for the answers.
Ad Fontes Interactive Media Bias Chart: It's a fascinating chart that shows many the span of bias. Worth poking around.
Information Pollution What’s the worst?Information Pollution: Personifying that PollutionResources:
Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., Goldberg, B., Rathje, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2022, August 24). Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Science Advances, 8(34), abo6254. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo6254
*Short videos that inoculate against misinformation online. (2023) Inoculation Science. Retrieved November 21, 2023 from https://inoculation.science/inoculation-videos/
Artwork: Dixon, S. (2023, December 10). Information Pollution [PNG]. Canva. https://www.canva.com/create/social-media-graphics/].