2019/Grants/“No como cuento 2.0” / “I don't buy it 2.0”: A digital literacy tool to curb producing, believing and sharing fake news and misinformation in highly polarized political settings.

WCNA 2019 Grant Submission name: Camila Zuluaga Beatriz Helena Vallejo Andrés Casas

username= NoComoCuento email: zuluaga.camila@gmail.com resume: - Camila Zuluaga - Journalist, Political Scientist - M.A Columbia https://www.linkedin.com/in/camila-zuluaga-b744a71/ - Beatriz Vallejo - Behavioral Scientist, Economist - MSc UCL, M.A. Economics https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatriz-helena-vallejo-reyes-78b18623/ - Andres Casas - Behavioural Scientist, Political Scientist - MBDS UPenn - M.A. Philosophy, Javeriana University B.A. Poli Sci. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andr%C3%A9s-casas-538a5296/

www.nocomocuento.com

Twitter: @NoComoCuento_

Instagram: @nocomocuento_

Facebook: @NoComoCuento_

"No Como cuento 1.0"

The starting point of the initiative, was when a group of journalist made a public compromise on fighting fake news in Colombia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COTQbksc-yQ&t=183s

Articles on “No Como Cuento 1.0”

- https://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2017/05/31/no-como-cuento-colombian-journalists-fight-fake-news

- https://www.uniminutoradio.com.co/no-como-cuento-o-lo-que-es-igual-no-trago-entero/

geography: Colombia - Pilot 1 (testing the tool in a controlled environment) (1 month) Colombia - Pilot 2 (scaling-up the tool in a representative sample of Colombians for 6 months) Launch of the project in Colombia

type=Other

idea= - Applied research aimed at producing a technological innovation and evidence-based behavioral change - Developing a fun, catchy, and simple digital literacy tool that brings together insights from behavioral science, edutainment and technology to: i. Increase Wikimedians adherence to Wikicred values, by reducing their biases prior to introduce any political information in the Wikipedia site

ii. Help users raise consciousness about their biases and possible misconceptions, and how they can make individuals more vulnerable to produce, believe and share certain types of fake news.

iii. Increase individual autonomy and agency regarding influence by the information they receive from their reference network

iv. Find ways to control for recidivism in reference networks.

How will the project do it?

i. The tool will provide feedback that people will receive and share easily with their contacts via whatsapp (mainly) and general social media as a debiasing mechanism online

ii. The tool is adapted to the hope-based communication initiative and will embrace positive narratives to reduce information avoidance by making users feel better about themselves, indispensable for societies wellbeing and to keep mindsets open to new information

iii. Shared emotions and values will be leveraged to show the consequences of fake-news for people, groups and institutions in real life.

iv. Educating on how social change relies on social learning. Awareness and voluntary transformation of behavior are two key steps of that process.

v. Mapping the topology of user´s reference networks and the spread of good or bad behavior

vi. Fostering autonomy by increasing critical analysis of the information people read, believe and share.

vii. The debiasing and enhancing of positive behavior regarding the production, consumption and sharing of news has three parts:

- Fun educational quizzes: A quiz that each individual answers, including feedback about the unconscious bias that can make that person more vulnerable to believing and sharing fake news

- Short videos with targeted content depending on the quizzes result: A short video, aimed at increasing awareness of the fake news problem and increasing autonomy and responsibility towards reading and sharing behaviour.

- Feedback on how other users like them behave and norms

- Honor code reminders: a tool used in behavioral science to increase adherence and compliance to desired behaviors

- A “check-list” mechanism to protect yourself and others from our vulnerability to fake news and misinformation.

- A “I don't buy it “/No como cuento certified user official recognition viii. To guarantee the ethical coherence of this initiative and its rigor, a research project will be part of this intervention to pilot and test the impact of the designed tools (quiz, videos and honor code reminders) in producing, believing and sharing information. This will be made in a controlled environment to assure internal and external validity of the results.

ix. The tool can be used by individuals who read, use and produce information

x. As a debiasing tool aimed at individuals, it fosters skills to help users be more autonomous, self-critical, honest and reliable when producing information (in the wikimedia environment, newspapers, etc).

xi. The resulting prototype is intended to be used by the wikimedia community before generating information (it could be the tool to replace “human proof” when editing information in Wikipedia for example). xii. There is a huge potential of reducing the fake news trend, by increasing individual’s autonomy and awareness towards the information they produce, read and share.
 * importance=i. Academic research (our own and the international interdisciplinary literature) has shown that individual biases, polarization, and cognitive characteristics influence the degree to which people believe and share fake news.

xiii. Increasing people's awareness, attitudes, and behavior is possible by using behavioral insights.

xiv. Fake News and gossip will coexist with human nature, especially in times of high uncertainty and shared attention to important matters; so empowering and “educating” people can be a friendly and simple complementary alternative to fact checking as the remedy to misinformation. Debiasing is an empowering skill that involves critical thinking and the capacity to debunk personal bias as users receive, interpret, analyze and decide to share information

xv. As an outcome, the “No como cuento” initiative posits a new norm in which users no longer conform to misinformation and accept fake news.

xvi. This is an innovative and alternative method to curve believing and sharing fake news. Although fact-checking offers an important method to help individuals identify misinformation, literature has shown that only a portion of individuals adjust their attitudes and beliefs when information is shown to be incorrect and that fact-checking can generate a backlash in the desired outcome by making people overconfident of the content that has not been labeled with a warning about its veracity. Additionally, having fact-checking methods that can cope with the growth rate of the production of information is unlikely. Therefore we believe that our methodology is a promising cost-effective way to help solve the root cause of believing and sharing fake news because we will use academically proven tools to change behaviors and attitudes in human beings.
 * inprogress=i. No como cuento was used as a National campaign aiming at increasing awareness about fake news and the importance of confirming sources.

xvii. We want to launch a second version “No Como Cuento 2.0” using a novel and fun edutainment tool backed up by Behavioral Science to increase the efficacy and reach of No Como cuento goals. Furthermore, given that the project aims to impact basic universal human biases by using tools that will be available online, it can potentially be scalable in a very cost-effective way.
 * relevance=Taking into account that biases are an essential part of how people use, produce and share information, this project will help individuals to be more capable of identifying the quality and credibility of the information they read and use. Additionally, it will help the Wikimedia members be more aware of their own biases when producing content, resulting in a more transparent and neutral information published online.
 * impact= We aim to offer our platform with a method to help enhance the quality and level of the political debate. We will provide a tool that reduces individuals' vulnerability to producing, using and sharing political fake news.
 * scalability=- Yes. in other Latin American countries and Latino audiences in the USA - potentially helping during the election seasons in each country.

- Potentially scalable to the UK and Europe We have the strength of being a multidisciplinary team that has a unique experience regarding practice, research and applied behaviorally informed interventions. Members of our team have been part of the most influential media outlets in the country and have led several innovative initiatives regarding free speech and debunking fake news. We have been part of innovative international, national and regional scientific and programming activities that have used experimental methods as a central part of their approach to social change in complex settings marked by protracted political violence, intergroup hostility and antisocial behavior. Finally, our team researches and consults using the social and behavioral change tool-box with successfully innovative results regarding fake news and correcting misperceptions that reproduce or activate intergroup hostility.
 * people=
 * inclusiveness=One of the positive impacts of our tool is that it helps cost-effectively to debias individuals and their reference networks therefore reduce the primal causes of intergroup hostility that underlies social and political polarization. Making people aware and less vulnerable to their own biases, empowers them and increases chances of opening their cognitive neighborhoods, benefiting inclusiveness and openness to perceived outgroup members and their point of views. One of our aims is to use our tool, as a first step to invite people from different political backgrounds to write about a common subject in wikipedia.
 * challenges=Raising all the resources needed to produce the tool and scaling it for 6 months to complete a longitudinal study with a randomized control trial.

How will we overcome them?

Funding through support with allies interested on the topic in Colombia and the region.
 * cost=10.000 usd
 * expenses=- Financing the participant pool of 1520 participants (a representative sample of colombians) - 5000 USD aprox

- Developing video interventions 5000 USD aprox.
 * time=We are aiming to make this an open platform that changes and iterates adjustments itself as long as different contexts arise. The design and production of the first set of tools would take 4months:

2 months developing the quizzes and video content 1 month for the first pilot and testing 1 month for data analysis and presentation of results }}