Misinformation, games, and feedback from you
This past week (5/31 to 6/7), almost 3 million people were exposed to climate misinformation.
In this space each week, triplecheck will share information on the climate misinformation we’re seeing online – what’s going viral, how many people are seeing it, and who’s responsible for moving it. triplecheck was initiated by the Climate Action Campaign and was created to develop innovative tools to help fight misinformation.
This past week (5/31 to 6/7), almost 3 million people were exposed to climate misinformation. A significantportion of thecontent mockedVice President Harris for stating that climate change is one of the root causes of the current surge of migrants at the southern border even though her statement has been backed up by policy papers and fact checks. There were also multiple tweets promoting the conspiracy theory that the Black Lives Matter movement and efforts to combat climate change are part of a larger effort to undermine individual freedoms and push a progressive social agenda. This week’s tracking also identified a piece in The Western Journal (debunked here and here) that was shared more than 14,000 times on Facebook; the piece stated that Biden’s infrastructure plan was a “wretched mess of bloat, giveaways, and Green New Deal style posturing” that would remove highways already in existence.
A March 2021 paper published by the American Psychological Association noted that “correcting misinformation is not an easy job” because “the fundamental problem with misinformation is that once people have heard it, they tend to believe and act on it, even after it’s been corrected.”
That’s why the most important thing we can do to blunt the impact of misinformation is to stop it from spreading in the first place. A March 2021 study by MIT found that simply reminding people about the importance of accuracy is one effective tactic. Educating people about how fake news spreads is another.
A May 2021 study by Cambridge University found that reminding people that misinformation is designed to manipulate them also made it less likely that they would share false information. The information acts as an “inoculant...building a psychological resistance against malicious falsehoods by raising awareness of how misinformation works.” Those researchers came up with a quick, 5 minute game that does exactly that. Go Viral is designed to provide a “microdose” of the methods used to spread misinformation so that it’s easier to avoid in the future.
Play it, and let us know what you think! Would you use this game, or something like it, to explain to others how misinformation works? Drop us a line at info@thetriplecheck.org.