Prebunking

The word was coined by analogy with debunking and came into use in the late 2010s, as researchers looked for something that worked better than correction. Corrections arrive late, reach fewer people than the original claim, and can backfire by repeating it. Prebunking reverses the order: the audience learns the trick first, and the claim, when it comes, looks like an example of the trick.

The method rests on William McGuire's inoculation theory from the 1960s, which found that exposing people to a weakened form of an attack on their beliefs, together with a refutation, made them more resistant to the full attack later. The modern applications are technique-based rather than claim-based: they teach the audience to recognize emotional manipulation, false dilemmas, Scapegoating, Whataboutism, and fake amplification in general, rather than refuting any particular story. Sander van der Linden and Jon Roozenbeek's Bad News game, in which players run a disinformation campaign and learn its techniques from the inside, is the best-known example, and short video prebunks have since been run on platforms at scale.

This site is a prebunking resource in the broad sense: every technique page is a weakened dose with a refutation attached. The quiz is the practice.

Compare inoculation theory and media literacy.