The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19
Open accessAbstract
The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. In this article, we explore the coronavirus “infodemic” and how behavioral scientists may seek to address this problem. We detail the scope of the problem and discuss the negative influence that COVID-19 misinformation can have on the widespread adoption of health protective behaviors in the population. In response, we explore how insights from the behavioral sciences can be leveraged to manage an effective societal response to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. In particular, we discuss the theory of psychological inoculation (or prebunking) as an efficient vehicle for conferring large-scale psychological resistance against fake news.
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“46% of people in the UK and 48% of people in the United States were exposed to false information.”
From The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as [242]
In the citing paper
“All countries proved to be highly vulnerable to disinformation and misinformation regarding the pandemic”
From The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as [242]
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Citations
Cites
The spread of true and false news online
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aap9559 · Cited by 8,847 · cited 1×
“One insight that has emerged is that fact-checks tend to spread slower on social media than misinformation (Vosoughi et al., 2018), making it difficult for fact-checking to be effective on its own.”
BackgroundThe proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9 · Cited by 5,081 · cited 2×
“(World Health Organization, 2020a), to false conspiracy theories that the virus was bioengineered in a lab in Wuhan (Andersen et al., 2020; Cohen, 2020), or that the 5G cellular network is causing or exacerbating symptoms of COVID-19 (BBC News, 2020).”
BackgroundUsing social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M. J., Crum, A. J., Douglas, K. M., Druckman, J. N., et al. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0884-z · Cited by 4,964
Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/1529100612451018 · Cited by 2,920
Zarocostas, J. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30461-x · Cited by 2,344 · cited 1×
“In fact, the spread of misleading information about the virus has led the World Health Organization (WHO) to warn of an on-going “infodemic” or an overabundance of information— especially misinformation—during an epidemic (World Health Organization, 2020b; Zarocostas, 2020).”
BackgroundRisk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world
Dryhurst, S., Schneider, C. R., Kerr, J. R., Freeman, A. L. J., Recchia, G. L., van der Bles, A. M., Spiegelhalter, D. J., & van der Linden, S. (2020) · Journal of Risk Research · doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1758193 · Cited by 1,815
Observational Study of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with Covid-19
Geleris, J., Sun, Y., Platt, J., Zucker, J., Baldwin, M., Hripcsak, G., Labella, A., Manson, D. K., Kubin, C., Barr, R. G., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2012410 · Cited by 1,625
Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks
Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1618923114 · Cited by 1,580 · cited 1×
“, climate change or vaccination) to the manipulation techniques that underpin most fake news such as using emotional language (Brady et al., 2017), conspiratorial reasoning (Lewandowsky et al.”
BackgroundCoronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)
Alowibdi, J. S., Alshdadi, A. A., Daud, A. Y., Dessouky, M. M., & Alhazmi, E. A. (2021) · International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems · doi:10.4018/ijswis.2021040101 · Cited by 1,530
Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world
Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C. R., Dryhurst, S., Kerr, J., Freeman, A. L. J., Recchia, G., van der Bles, A. M., & van der Linden, S. (2020) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.201199 · Cited by 1,447
Self-citation
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- Carlsson, 2019, Understanding Media and Information Literacy MIL) in the Digital Age: A Question of Democracy.
- Cohen, 2020, Scientists “Strongly Condemn” Rumors and Conspiracy theories about Origin of Coronavirus Outbreak. Science Magazine.
- Constine, 2020, Facebook Deletes Brazil President’s Coronavirus Misinfo Post. Tech Crunch.
- Cook, 2020, Coronavirus, “Plandemic” and the Seven Traits of Conspiratorial Thinking. The Conversation.
- Mitchell, 2020, Americans Immersed in COVID-19 News; Most Think Media Are Doing Fairly Well Covering It. Pew Research Center.
- 2020, Half of UK Adults Exposed to False Claims about Coronavirus.
- Sanders, 2020, The Difference between What Republicans and Democrats Believe to be True about COVID-19. YouGov.
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic
Sachs, J. D., Karim, S. S. A., Aknin, L., Allen, J., Brosbøl, K., Colombo, F., Barron, G. C., Espinosa, M. F., Gaspar, V., Gaviria, A., et al. (2022) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(22)01585-9 · Cited by 842
Countering Misinformation and Fake News Through Inoculation and Prebunking
Lewandowsky, S., & van der Linden, S. (2021) · European Review of Social Psychology · doi:10.1080/10463283.2021.1876983 · Cited by 773
Rocha, Y. M., de Moura, G. A., Desidério, G. A., de Oliveira, C. H., Lourenço, F. D., & Nicolete, L. D. D. F. (2021) · Journal of Public Health · doi:10.1007/s10389-021-01658-z · Cited by 485
Chater, N., & Loewenstein, G. (2023) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x22002023 · Cited by 710
COVID‐19 vaccination intention in the first year of the pandemic: A systematic review
Al-Amer, R. M., Maneze, D., Everett, B., Montayre, J., Villarosa, A. R., Dwekat, E., & Salamonson, Y. (2021) · Journal of Clinical Nursing · doi:10.1111/jocn.15951 · Cited by 278
Metadata
- Authors
- van der Linden, S., Roozenbeek, J., & Compton, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Corresponding author
- van der Linden, Sander
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2020-10-23
- Volume
- 11
- Pages
- 566790-566790
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7644779
- OpenAlex
- W3094229442
- Cited by
- 632
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 70 · 2025: 71 · 2024: 127 · 2023: 120 · 2022: 143 · 2021: 98 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 121.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation, infodemic, fake news, psychological inoculation, prebunking, preventive health behavior, social media, behavioral interventions, SARS-CoV-2
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