JC. Princen Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google, will launch an anti-disinformation campaign next week to combat misinformation about Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, based on research from two British universities.
Psychologists from the universities of Cambridge and Bristol have collaborated with Jigsaw to create 90-second videos designed to “immunize” people against harmful social media content.
Seven experiments were conducted, including one with a group of Americans over 18 who watch political news on YouTube. Jigsaw exposed approximately 5.4 million U.S. YouTube users to an immunization video, of which nearly one million watched for at least 30 seconds.
In collaboration with local non-governmental organizations, fact-checkers, academics, and disinformation specialists, the campaign aims to build resistance to anti-refugee narratives.
The spread of false and misleading information through social media networks in the United States and Europe has prompted various governments to advocate for new legislation to combat disinformation campaigns.
Beth Goldberg, head of research at Jigsaw, stated in an interview, “We are considering this a pilot experiment, so there is no reason why this approach could not be scaled to other countries.”
“Poland was selected because it has the greatest number of Ukrainian refugees,” she explained, adding that the Czech Republic and Slovakia would serve as useful indicators for the rest of Europe.
The duration of the campaign is one month.
Written using material from reuters.com
