ABOUT THE PROJECT

Why now?

Misinformation is increasingly encountered in fast-moving digital environments that are designed to capture attention and encourage rapid engagement. Although existing interventions can teach people how to identify false claims or manipulation techniques, their effects are often assessed immediately and through explicit accuracy judgments. We still know much less about whether people spontaneously apply what they have learned while scrolling on social media, whether interventions improve real decisions such as sharing, liking or clicking and whether their effects persist over time and generalize to unfamiliar content. Moreover, adolescents constitute a particularly important group because ongoing cognitive, social and emotional development may increase their vulnerability to persuasive and manipulative online content.

What's novel?

The project integrates three complementary challenges: a learning deficit, when people do not know how misinformation works; an inattention deficit, when they possess the relevant knowledge but fail to activate it while browsing and motivated reasoning, when identities, attitudes or prior beliefs influence how information is evaluated. 

To address these challenges, the project combines technique-based inoculation, media-literacy guidance, friction before engagement, accuracy and manipulation prompts, together with later boosters. It tests their effects through realistic social-media behavior—including sharing, liking, clicking and scrolling—and uses longitudinal and transfer assessments to determine whether learning generalizes and remains effective over time.