Investigating Longitudinal Effects of Physical Inoculation Interventions Against Disinformation

This ongoing project investigates both the immediate and long-term effectiveness of the “Fake News” card game, a physical inoculation-based board game to counter disinformation, developed by the DROG group in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. This extends previous research using the “Fake News” card game, incorporating a longitudinal element and a wider demographic. A pre-test post-test within-subjects study (N=54) was designed to test participants’ persuasiveness and reliability judgements on fictional ‘fake news’ articles. 7-point Likert scales, as well as a number of qualitative, open-ended questions were delivered before playing the “Fake News” game, immediately after, and 9 weeks after the intervention. Qualitative analysis found participants critically analysing the author and writing style of ‘fake news’ articles with a high frequency and in more detail immediately after the intervention, with a skill fade over the subsequent 9 weeks to the longitudinal post-test. Contrary to this, quantitative testing found a significant decrease in persuasiveness and reliability judgements of ‘fake news’ articles exclusively in the longitudinal post-test. These quantitative results are in contrast to current literature around longitudinal effects of inoculation interventions, and if repeatable this may indicate stimulation of reflective learning in a way that digital gamified inoculation interventions have not achieved.