The 2020 Research Prize in Public Interest Communications has been awarded to two scholars from Cambridge University for a scientific paper that explores how people can be “inoculated” from falling victim to false information online.
The $10,000 prize for Fake News Game Confers Psychological Resistance Against Online Misinformation was awarded February 7 at the frank2020 gathering in Gainesville, Fla., to Jon Roozenbeek, Department of Slavonic Studies and Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge; and Sander van der Linden Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences.
For their study the authors designed what they describe as “a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game.” The authors write that in the game, “players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: 
polarization, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts.”
They add that the game “draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarizing people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation.”
(Read more about the “bad news” game.)
The winning paper was one of three selected – from a pool of more than 70 entries – as finalists for this year’s annual prize competition. In addition to the $10,000 grand prize for peer-reviewed academic research that informs the growing discipline of public interest communications, the Center for Public Interest Communications awards $1,500 to each of the two other finalists. A review committee of scholars and practitioners selected the three papers for this year’s competition.
The finalist papers are:
Credibility-Enhancing Displays Promote the Provision of Non-Normative Public Goods
Authors: Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, Department of Psychology, Yale University; Bryan Bollinger, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University; Kenneth Gillingham, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University; Stefan Lamp, Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse Capitole; and David G. Rand, Sloan School and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
How Hope and Doubt Affect Climate Change Mobilization
Authors: Jennifer Marlon1, Brittany Bloodhart2 , Matthew T. Ballew1, Justin Rolfe-Redding3, Connie Roser-Renouf3, Anthony Leiserowitz1 and Edward Maibach3
1School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University; 2Department of Psychology, Colorado State University; and 3Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
Read more about the research prize.
