Raising Misinformation Awareness via Rule-Based and Mindfulness Training

Disinformation campaigns can have real and lasting effects, such as driving political elections, causing vaccine hesitancy, and creating intergroup conflicts. This paper reviews existing literature on disinformation and misinformation, and describes a study conducted by the authors in which the likelihood of sharing misinformation was measured among participants who received training based on rules or mindfulness, or who received no training at all. Participants who received misinformation training were less likely to share (i.e., pass along) the misinformation compared to participants who did not receive misinformation training. Thus, susceptibility to misinformation can be combated through educational strategies.