News Feature: Finding a vaccine for misinformation

With deliberate deception a growing threat online, social scientists are devising ways to fight back with “cognitive inoculations”

In early March, after a wave of coronavirus cases struck a Muslim congregation in India, the hashtag #CoronaJihad went viral on Indian Twitter, and Islamophobic messages began to surge on social media. In one case, a false video showed purportedly Muslim men licking plates—allegedly to spread the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). In reality, these men belonged to a community that strongly discourages wasting food. No one knows who crafted these false messages, or why. But anti-Muslim attacks increased after their release.

It’s hardly an isolated example. Misinformation has been rife during the pandemic—ranging from rumors about the virus being an escaped bioweapon to specious reports of a miracle cure doctors won’t tell you about. Of course, this is only the latest flavor of fakery, which includes high-profile efforts such as climate-change denialism, antivaccine agitation (1), and Russian attempts to erode trust in the 2016 election. In every case, says Emma Spiro, a sociologist who is studying coronavirus misinformation at the University of Washington in Seattle, the risk is that “people may use the false information as the basis for decision making and actions that endanger themselves and others.”

Experts sometimes distinguish between misinformation, which is simply wrong and may even be an honest mistake, and disinformation, which is formulated with an intent to deceive. Whatever the name, stemming the onslaught can seem like a losing battle. Researchers, tech companies, journalists, and fact checkers have been trying to debunk misinformation for years. But researchers have found that this …