Effective Yet Ephemeral Propaganda Defense: There Needs to Be More than One-Shot Inoculation to Enhance Critical Thinking

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hoferer, Nicolas, Sprenkamp, Kilian, Quelle, Dorian Christoph, Jones, Daniel Gordon, Katashinskaya, Zoya, Bovet, Alexandre, Zavolokina, Liudmila
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hoferer, Nicolas
Sprenkamp, Kilian
Quelle, Dorian Christoph
Jones, Daniel Gordon
Katashinskaya, Zoya
Bovet, Alexandre
Zavolokina, Liudmila
author_facet Hoferer, Nicolas
Sprenkamp, Kilian
Quelle, Dorian Christoph
Jones, Daniel Gordon
Katashinskaya, Zoya
Bovet, Alexandre
Zavolokina, Liudmila
contents In today's media landscape, propaganda distribution has a significant impact on society. It sows confusion, undermines democratic processes, and leads to increasingly difficult decision-making for news readers. We investigate the lasting effect on critical thinking and propaganda awareness on them when using a propaganda detection and contextualization tool. Building on inoculation theory, which suggests that preemptively exposing individuals to weakened forms of propaganda can improve their resilience against it, we integrate Kahneman's dual-system theory to measure the tools' impact on critical thinking. Through a two-phase online experiment, we measure the effect of several inoculation doses. Our findings show that while the tool increases critical thinking during its use, this increase vanishes without access to the tool. This indicates a single use of the tool does not create a lasting impact. We discuss the implications and propose possible approaches to improve the resilience against propaganda in the long-term.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16497
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Effective Yet Ephemeral Propaganda Defense: There Needs to Be More than One-Shot Inoculation to Enhance Critical Thinking
Hoferer, Nicolas
Sprenkamp, Kilian
Quelle, Dorian Christoph
Jones, Daniel Gordon
Katashinskaya, Zoya
Bovet, Alexandre
Zavolokina, Liudmila
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
In today's media landscape, propaganda distribution has a significant impact on society. It sows confusion, undermines democratic processes, and leads to increasingly difficult decision-making for news readers. We investigate the lasting effect on critical thinking and propaganda awareness on them when using a propaganda detection and contextualization tool. Building on inoculation theory, which suggests that preemptively exposing individuals to weakened forms of propaganda can improve their resilience against it, we integrate Kahneman's dual-system theory to measure the tools' impact on critical thinking. Through a two-phase online experiment, we measure the effect of several inoculation doses. Our findings show that while the tool increases critical thinking during its use, this increase vanishes without access to the tool. This indicates a single use of the tool does not create a lasting impact. We discuss the implications and propose possible approaches to improve the resilience against propaganda in the long-term.
title Effective Yet Ephemeral Propaganda Defense: There Needs to Be More than One-Shot Inoculation to Enhance Critical Thinking
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16497