Stop fake news: Study reveals the best way to deal with conspiracy theorists

In recent years, one of the biggest problems humanity has ever seen has caused countless disruptions, including several deaths. But here, surprisingly, we are not talking about the pandemic, but about fake news.

Logically, we must never underestimate the enormous impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on humanity, as it has caused after-effects across the world and led to the death of around 15 million people, according to the WHO.

However, we also cannot reduce the impact caused worldwide by the wave of misinformation generated by fake news. This fake, and sometimes criminal, news has led to a mistaken popular belief, for example, that vaccination against Covid implants chips of control over people.

This and many other fallacies, in turn, give rise to conspiracy theories of all kinds and subjects. Unfortunately, since some people have not had access to a quality education, they end up easily falling for this type of information. It may also happen that, because they receive this news from people they know, they trust the sender more than the source.

And it was with this in mind that researchers at University College Cork, in Ireland, sought to understand the best way to make people who fall for this chain of misinformation pay attention and know how to identify it.

How to ‘neutralize’ conspiracists?

The study analyzed various data collected by its researchers in order to understand the most efficient ways to neutralize conspiracy beliefs.

Unfortunately, research has concluded that there is no quick or extremely effective way to get people to rethink their beliefs in absurd theories.

According to Cian O’Mahony, the study’s lead author:

“We are still far from having a silver bullet that will solve disinformation as a whole, unfortunately.”

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to tackle this gradually. For example, in their research, scientists found that preventing people from being misled is the best way to combat this misinformation.

In other words, it is best to warn them in advance about how to identify false information or even about news that is already known before it reaches that person.

Finally, according to O’Mahony and his assistants, this is a more efficient way than mocking or appealing to feelings of empathy or any other strategy linked to emotions.