Google set to launch campaign to tackle misinformation about Ukrainian refugees amid war

A campaign to combat misinformation about Ukrainian refugees will be launched by Google's Jigsaw subsidiary, next week, according to media reports. According to New York Times, campaign is based on findings of two British universities' psychologists.

At end of August, Jigsaw will launch a "pre-bunking" vertising campaign based on its investigation of social media sites YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. According to media agency, campaign will target users in Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic.

Since start of Russia-Ukraine war, Poland has taken in greatest number of Ukrainian refugees. Slovakia and Czech Republic have also been key destinations for escaping Ukrainians. campaign aims to build resistance to false narratives about refugees.

New York Times reported, quoting Beth Goldberg, Jigsaw he researcher as saying, "We are thinking of this as a pilot experiment, so re's absolutely no reason that this approach couldn't be scaled to or countries. Poland was chosen because it has most Ukrainian refugees."

study included seven experiments, including one with a group of Americans over age of 18 who watch political news on YouTube. Jigsaw showed an inoculation video to approximately 5.4 million US YouTube viewers, with nearly a million watching for at least 30 seconds.

campaign aims to build resilience to anti-refugee narratives

In collaboration with local non-governmental organisations, fact-checkers, acemics, and disinformation experts, campaign aims to build resilience to anti-refugee narratives. spre of false and misleing information on social media networks in United States and Europe has prompted various governments to call for new laws to combat disinformation campaigns.

Psychologists from Bristol and Cambridge universities created 90-second videos to "inoculate" viewers against misinformation. article suggested "inoculation ory" as a way to reduce susceptibility to misinformation by informing people about how y might be misinformed.  article was published in Science vances journal.

Five quick videos were also created by researchers to protect viewers against five common forms of manipulation: "Emotionally manipulative language, incoherence, false dichotomies, scapegoating, and hominem attacks." videos "improve manipulation technique recognition" and "increase people's ability to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy content," according to paper's authors.

(With agency inputs)

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