Prebunking is a technique gaining prominence as a means to build preemptive resilience to misinformation. This guide was developed for practitioners interested in defending against misleading and manipulative information. It documents the foundations of prebunking, aiming to translate academic research into a practical how-to guide that enables groups and individuals with no prior knowledge of behavioral psychology to deploy their own prebunking interventions.

This work is a collaborative effort between the University of Cambridge, Jigsaw (Google) and BBC Media Action. The University of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab has been at the forefront of developing prebunking approaches, based on inoculation theory, designed to build people’s resilience to mis- and disinformation.

Jigsaw, a team at Google, has partnered with leading universities around the world, including the University of Cambridge, to test prebunking in a variety of settings in order to understand the advantages and limitations of this approach.

BBC Media Action, the BBC’s international development charity, is adapting and testing the use of prebunking approaches as one of its strategies to tackle information disorder in the various countries where it works.

This guide was written by the following people (listed in alphabetical order by organization): Mikey Biddlestone, Trisha Harjani, Sander van der Linden, and Jon Roozenbeek (University of Cambridge), Alasdair Stuart (BBC Media Action), Beth Goldberg, Meghan Graham, Mari Iwahara, Bomo Piri, Peter Weigand, and Rachel Xu (Jigsaw).

If you have any questions or concerns related to the research in this guide, please contact Jon Roozenbeek at the University of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

If you would like more information on BBC Media Action’s work tackling information disorder (including prebunking approaches) or you have any other enquiries for BBC Media Action, please email Alasdair Stuart.