Prebunking

October 20, 2022

Dear Friends:

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Most people, I think, are familiar with the idea of debunking, if not the word. It's what a lot of news outlets call "fact-checking" these days.

I also think most of us understand why we need debunking. Some ideas are false or misleading, and deserve to be shown as such.

Trouble is, while debunking is good and necessary, it has some limitations. Misinformation spreads farther, faster than correction. And when it reaches us, it's hard to put it out of our minds. It continues to shape our thinking, even when we know it's false.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" goes an old saying. That goes for disinformation and disease. It's much better to find a way to stop lies, rumors, and quackery before it's shared. That's called pre-bunking, or "inoculating" people against bad information.

Illustration of how prebunking prevents the spread of misinformation by convincing individuals not to share it more widely.

There are three main ways of doing this. Fact-based prebunking corrects false claims or stories. Logic-based explains the tactics used to manipulate our thinking. And source-based strategies reveal poor or misleading sources of information.

Here's a step-by-step guide, condensed from an article at First Draft News. Follow that link for more details.

Figure out what information people need. Make sure to know the kinds of questions your audience might have. Are there things they find confusing? Are there stories or feelings someone might play on? How can you help people identify these techniques to protect themselves? What do they need more information about?

Pick your battles. For example, we're coming up on elections. You might decide that people need to know when and where to vote, to head off anyone trying to mislead them. (Elections are Tuesday, November 8th, and you can find your polling place here.) Or let's pick one more relevant to COVID. Parents of young children may need assurance that COVID vaccinations do not cause infertility or other reproductive problems. Going deeper, you might look at social media messages that say otherwise. Talk about the ways such messages try to manipulate their audience with emotional language.

The "truth sandwich": truth, warning, fallacy explained, truth.

Wrap your message in truth. Use what's known as a "truth sandwich." State the truth, then warn your audience that they're going to hear something false. Explain the fallacy and finally restate the facts so they stick in your audience's mind.

Warn the audience. Make sure they're on guard before they hear the bad information. This might be as simple as saying that some people are out to mislead them.

Add detail. Don't get into the weeds. But do help them understand why this information is false, misleading, or manipulative.

Show them the tactics. Help your audience understand how these messages work, and why people might want to use them. It will help them become better consumers of all kinds of information.

Be humble. To build trust, explain how you know what you know. Don't be afraid to admit the limits of your knowledge. It prepares people for the inevitable changes and updates. For example: "Scientists are hopeful that bivalent vaccines will protect us against new COVID variants for at least a year. But a lot depends on how quickly the virus mutates. It's important to get protected now, rather than wait for a perfect vaccine to come along."

Keep it simple.

Make it shareable. Short, snappy messages that can be shared by text, or images designed for mobile phones work well. Oddly, people will read images of text before they look at comments or posts, if at all.

Get it to them where they are. Figure out where your audience is online, or if they prefer to get their messages by text, newsletter, church bulletin, or even from the pulpit. Craft your truth to cut through the noise and be memorable.

Put it all together, and here's what it might look like. "COVID vaccines are safe and effective for all ages. I'm going to give you some examples of misleading information that claims otherwise. These messages use mothers' protective instincts to convince people that vaccines cause infertility. They us bad science or sometimes outright lies, and they do it because they oppose all vaccinations, not just COVID. The truth is that multiple studies involving hundreds of thousands of people have shown that these vaccines are safe and protect both children and adults against serious illness and death."

Or even briefer for text messaging or social media posts:

Hey, wanted to share some information. COVID vaccines are safe and effective for everyone.

Some people want to tell you something else. It's not true.

They want moms to be scared about vaccinating their kids for no reason. They say it causes infertility. It's junk science and sometimes just plain lies.

They do it because they don't want people to get any kind of vaccine, not just COVID vaccines.

But there's a lot of science that shows these vaccines are safe for kids and adults. They protect people from getting really sick or even dying.

That's far from perfect, but I think you get the idea. Keep it short, sweet, wrapped in truth, and out before the misinformation starts passing around. Now you try one.

Daniel Schultz

Community Health

Program Director