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Chapter 15 - Debunking and Preventing Conspiracies

Special Challenges of QAnon

from Part IV - The Role of Communication in Promoting and Limiting QAnon Support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

By
John A. Banas  and
Elena Bessarabova
Edited by
Monica K. Miller
Monica K. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
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Summary

This chapter opens with a review of the dangers of misinformation and conspiracy theory beliefs. We then review the literature on debunking techniques, highlighting why debunking is largely ineffective at combatting QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Although corrections are largely ineffective, repeated corrections, warnings, and alternative accounts for misinformation can improve their effectiveness. In contrast to debunking, another approach is “prebunking”; trying to prevent conspiracies rather than counter them. Based on inoculation theory, Banas and Miller (2013) found that both fact-based and logic-based messages delivered before a conspiracy film helped build up participants’ resistance to that message. Next, this chapter discusses the role of media literacy in the QAnon—and other more general—conspiracies. Research has indicated that greater news media literacy relates negatively to beliefs in conspiracies (Craft et al., 2017). A brief discussion of how QAnon is similar or different from other groups is offered, along with some research questions for future study about QAnon specifically.

Keywords

correctionsdebunkinginoculationprebunkingnews literacycritical thinking
Type
Chapter
Information
The Social Science of QAnon
A New Social and Political Phenomenon
 , pp. 252 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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