Can people be 'inoculated' against misinformation? – Science – AAAS

"You are not immune to propaganda" -Garfield

I prefer STASM (Source,Time,Audience,Subject,Mission) analysis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212528

> "If you agree with it, it's truth. If you don't agree, it's propaganda. Pretend that it is all propaganda. See what happens on your analysis reports."

EDIT: come to think of it, why would we even need special inoculation, when we're surrounded by economic misinformation, ie advertising?

In my college media studies classes we learned about Inoculation Theory, first developed in 1961 by Yale social psychologist William J. McGuire.

TL;DR: it does work. The effects have been replicated multiple times. It is a form of psychological manipulation, implying all the relevant risks and ethical considerations.

You can't define what "misinformation" is, unless you can establish a final, irrevocable truth about that same subject. This is possible only in a very limited number of cases, and it is essentially anti-scientific and/ or anti-humanistic in all others.

Therefore, all these "anti-misinformation" studies and endeavours are essentially propaganda efforts, meant to establish and maintain the domination of some ideas over others. Which is not to say that the intentions are nefarious, or that the ideas they are trying to impose are wrong- just that it is most probable that some of the stuff labeled as misinformation is actually true and vice versa, some of the "correct information" is actually misinformation. And a free, un-manipulated public opinion is necessary to find which is which.