Conversational Inoculation to Enhance Resistance to Misinformation

Proliferation of misinformation is a globally acknowledged problem. Cognitive Inoculation helps build resistance to different forms of persuasion, such as misinformation. We investigate Conversational Inoculation, a method to help people build resistance to misinformation through dynamic conversations with a chatbot. We built a Web-based system to implement the method, and conducted a within-subject user experiment to compare it with two traditional inoculation methods. Our results validate Conversational Inoculation as a viable novel method, and show how it was able to enhance participants’ resistance to misinformation. A qualitative analysis of the conversations between participants and the chatbot highlighted adaptability, independence, trust and friction as the main factors affecting Conversational Inoculation. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of using Conversational Inoculation to combat misinformation. Our work contributes a timely investigation and a promising research direction in scalable ways to combat misinformation.