What are
Conspiracy
Theories?
How to be sure it's a Conspiracy Theory?
To spot them, look for claims that rely heavily on suspicion, secret plots, selective evidence, or assumptions that important information is being deliberately hidden. Examples include claims that governments, companies, or other powerful groups are secretly coordinating events behind the scenes without clear evidence.
Project Description
Truth Labs for Education is a collaboration between Cambridge University, the University of Bristol, and Google Jigsaw. We created a series of short videos designed to help people resist unwanted persuasion online. The videos are rooted in a framework from social psychology called inoculation theory, which posits that by exposing people to a weakened dose of a persuasive argument or technique and pre-emptively refuting it, they develop psychological resistance against future manipulative persuasion attempts.
We created 5 videos, each of which “inoculates” people against a particular manipulation technique or misleading rhetorical device commonly encountered online: ad hominem attacks, using emotional language to evoke fear or outrage, false dichotomies, incoherence, and scapegoating.
