Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:33:26.424Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 15 - Debunking and Preventing Conspiracies

Special Challenges of QAnon

from Part IV - The Role of Communication in Promoting and Limiting QAnon Support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

By
John A. Banas  and
Elena Bessarabova
Edited by
Monica K. Miller
Monica K. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Get access

Summary

This chapter opens with a review of the dangers of misinformation and conspiracy theory beliefs. We then review the literature on debunking techniques, highlighting why debunking is largely ineffective at combatting QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Although corrections are largely ineffective, repeated corrections, warnings, and alternative accounts for misinformation can improve their effectiveness. In contrast to debunking, another approach is “prebunking”; trying to prevent conspiracies rather than counter them. Based on inoculation theory, Banas and Miller (2013) found that both fact-based and logic-based messages delivered before a conspiracy film helped build up participants’ resistance to that message. Next, this chapter discusses the role of media literacy in the QAnon—and other more general—conspiracies. Research has indicated that greater news media literacy relates negatively to beliefs in conspiracies (Craft et al., 2017). A brief discussion of how QAnon is similar or different from other groups is offered, along with some research questions for future study about QAnon specifically.

Keywords

correctionsdebunkinginoculationprebunkingnews literacycritical thinking
Type
Chapter
Information
The Social Science of QAnon
A New Social and Political Phenomenon
 , pp. 252 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banas, J. A. (2020). Inoculation theory. In The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology (pp. 1–8). John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Miller, G. (2013). Inducing resistance to conspiracy theory propaganda: Testing inoculation and meta-inoculation strategies. Human Communication Research, 40, 1–24.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Rains, S. A. (2010). A meta-analysis of research on inoculation theory. Communication Monographs, 77, 281–311.Google Scholar
Banas, J. A., & Richards, A. (2017). Apprehension or motivation to defend attitudes? Exploring the underlying threat mechanism in inoculation-induced resistance to persuasion. Communication Monographs, 84, 164–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banas, J. A., Bessarabova, E., Adame, B., & Robertson, K. (2015). The role of emotion in inoculating against conspiracy media. Paper presented at the 65th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 21–25.Google Scholar
Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Good news about Bad News: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cultivates cognitive immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3, 1–9.Google Scholar
Bush, J. G., Johnson, H. M., & Seifert, C. M. (1994). The implications of corrections: Then why did you mention it? In Ram, A. & Eiselt, K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 112–117). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Center for Media Literacy. (2021). Media literacy: A definition and more. Center for Media Literacy. www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-moreGoogle Scholar
Cialdini, R. (2016). Pre-suasion: A revolutionary way to influence and persuade. Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Compton, J. (2013). Inoculation theory. In Dillard, J. P. & Shen, L. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of persuasion: Developments in theory and practice (2nd ed., pp. 220–236). SAGE.Google Scholar
Cook, J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. (2017). Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence. PLoS ONE, 12, e0175799.Google Scholar
Craft, S., Ashley, S., & Maksl, A. (2017). News media literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement. Communication and the Public, 2(4), 388–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 538–542.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dwoskin, E., & Timberg, C. (2021, January 16). Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump and some allies. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/misinformation-trump-twitter/Google Scholar
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Apai, J. (2011a). Terrorists brought down the plane! – No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 283–310.Google Scholar
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011b). Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 570–578.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Tang, D. T. W. (2010). Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 38, 1087–1100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasson, U., Simmons, J. P., & Todorov, A. (2005). Believe it or not: On the possibility of suspending belief. Psychological Science, 16, 566–571.Google Scholar
Healy, J. (2021, January 11). These are the 5 people who died in the Capitol riot. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.htmlGoogle Scholar
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1994). Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1420–1436.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1998). Updating accounts following a correction of misinformation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1483–1494.Google ScholarPubMed
Johnson, H. M., & Siefert, C. M. (1999). Modifying mental representations: Comprehending corrections. In van Oostendorp, H. & Goldman, S. R. (Eds.), The construction of mental representations during reading (pp. 303–318). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE, 9, e89177.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Jerit, J., Schwieder, D., & Rich, R. F. (2000). Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship. Journal of Politics, 62, 790–816.Google Scholar
Lee, B. Y. (2021, January 30). Did Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blame a “space laser” for wildfires? Here’s the response. Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/01/30/did-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-blame-a-space-laser-for-wildfires-heres-the-response/?sh=7db907a1e44aGoogle Scholar
Levine, T. R. (2019). Duped: Truth-default theory and the social science of lying and deception. University Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the “post-truth” era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106–131.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2013a). The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. PLoS ONE, 8(10), e75637.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013b). NASA faked the moon landing, therefore, (climate) science is a hoax. An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622–633.Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2006). The structure and function of explanations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 464–470.Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2007). Simplicity and probability in causal explanation. Cognitive Psychology, 55, 232–257.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lutzke, L., Drummond, C., Slovic, P., & Arvai, J. (2019). Priming critical thinking: Simple interventions limit the influence of fake news about climate change on Facebook. Global Environmental Change, 58, 101964.Google Scholar
Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 27(1), 1–16.Google ScholarPubMed
McGuire, W. J. (1964). Inducing resistance to persuasion. Some contemporary approaches. In Berkowitz, L. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 191–229). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mena, P. (2020). Cleaning up social media: The effect of warning labels on likelihood of sharing false news on Facebook. Policy & Internet, 12, 165–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfau, M. W. (2005). Evaluating conspiracy: Narrative, argument, and ideology in Lincoln’s ‘‘House Divided’’ speech. Argumentation and Advocacy, 42, 57–73.Google Scholar
Raab, M. H., Ortlieb, S., Auer, N., Guthmann, K., & Carbon, C. C. (2013). Thirty shades of truth: Conspiracy theories as stories of individuation, not of pathological delusion. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rapp, D. N., & Kendeou, P. (2007). Revisiting what readers know: Updating text representations during narrative comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 35, 2019–2023.Google Scholar
Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). The fake news game: Actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation. Journal of Risk Research, 22, 570–580.Google Scholar
Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020). Prebunking interventions based on “inoculation” theory can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1, 1–23.Google Scholar
Rose, J. (2020, December 30). Even if it’s “bonkers,” poll finds many believe QAnon and other conspiracy theories. NPR. www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers-poll-finds-many-believe-qanon-and-other-conspiracy-theoriesGoogle Scholar
Sapountzis, A., & Condor, S. (2013). Conspiracy accounts as intergroup theories: Challenging dominant understandings of social power and political legitimacy. Political Psychology, 34, 731–752.Google Scholar
Schul, Y., Mayo, R., & Burnstein, E. (2008). The value of distrust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1293–1302.Google Scholar
Schwarz, N., Sanna, L. J., Skurnik, I., & Yoon, C. (2007). Metacognitive experiences and the intricacies of setting people straight: Implications for debiasing and public information campaigns. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 127–161.Google Scholar
Smith, N., & Leiserowitz, A. A. (2012). The rise of global warming skepticism: Exploring affective image associations in the United States over time. Risk Analysis, 32, 1021–1032.Google Scholar
Tenney, E. R., Clearly, H. M. D., & Spellman, B. A. (2009). Unpacking the doubt in “beyond a reasonable doubt”: Plausible alternative stories increase not guilty verdicts. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31, 1–8.Google Scholar
van Oostendorp, H., & Bonebakker, C. (1999). Difficulties in updating mental representations during reading news reports. In van Oostendorp, H. & Goldman, S. R. (eds.), The construction of mental representations during reading (pp. 319–339). Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Vraga, E. K., & Bode, L. (2020). Defining misinformation and understanding its bounded nature: Using expertise and evidence for describing misinformation. Political Communication, 37, 136–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vraga, E. K., & Tully, M. (2021). News literacy, social media behaviors, and skepticism toward information on social media. Information, Communication, & Society, 24, 150–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vraga, E. K., Kim, S. C., Cook, J., & Bode, L. (2020). Testing the effectiveness of correction placement and type on Instagram. International Journal of Press/Politics, 25, 632–652.Google Scholar
Wilkes, A. L., & Leatherbarrow, M. (1988). Editing episodic memory following the identification of error. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 40, 361–387.Google Scholar
Wilkes, A. L., & Reynolds, D. J. (1999). On certain limitations accompanying readers’ interpretations of corrections in episodic text. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 52, 165–183.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×