Ever since ‘fake news’ disrupted crucial votes such as Brexit and the 2020 US Presidential Election, election stakeholders have been grappling with the challenge of disinformation. In fact, the deterioration of information ecosystems has become so pervasive and ubiquitous that it’s recognized as one of the biggest threats to election integrity by organizations like the World Economic Forum and the Brennan Center for Justice.
Fortunately, a relatively new tool, known as prebunking, is showing promising results in the fight against disinformation and other forms of misinformation.
The concept of prebunking can be compared to vaccination in medicine, where the body is exposed to a weakened form of a pathogen to stimulate an immune response without causing illness. Similarly, prebunking presents pre-emptive counterarguments to false claims, thereby strengthening resilience against future misinformation. As in medicine, prevention is more impactful than cure. The goal is to equip audiences with the ability to identify and resist misinformation before it gains traction.
Leading prebunking researchers at companies like Google’s Jigsaw and academic institutions like the University of Cambridge realized that misinformation ‘has an Achilles heel’. That is, it frequently employs repetitive tactics and patterns. By recognizing these patterns historically, they can anticipate and counteract future misinformation through pre-bunking. These researchers are among the main proponents of prebunking.
IDEA International, an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy worldwide, analyzed disinformation in 53 countries across all continents between 2016 and 2021. Their study revealed that election-related disinformation is indeed repetitive. Specifically, 48% of disinformation targets the vote counting and voting processes, and nearly 50% of all attacks occur during the voting period of the cycle.
Allegations that technology has been hacked by foreign actors, that servers are located abroad, or that technology vendors are owned by nefarious entities are recurring themes. These claims became even more prevalent following the disinformation campaigns surrounding the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.
Given the repetitive nature of disinformation, election management bodies have an opportunity to anticipate where and how it will emerge. This foresight can be leveraged to design proactive strategies, or “vaccines,” to combat disinformation effectively.
A key advantage of prebunking is its focus on addressing broader narratives and the underlying manipulation techniques used to spread misinformation. Unlike fact-checking or warning labels on social media, which concentrate on debunking individual claims, prebunking takes a wider view of the information ecosystem. This broader perspective allows election management bodies to tackle disinformation proactively, without appearing politicized in their responses to false claims. Moreover, by exposing the techniques behind disinformation rather than targeting specific content, prebunking reduces the risk of accusations of infringing on free speech, offering a balanced and effective approach to safeguarding public trust.
While prebunking in elections is relatively new, promising experiences in recent elections provide reasons for optimism. Researchers from Yale University and the University of California, San Diego, demonstrated in a study that watching a prebunking video explaining the reasons behind the time taken to count ballots can significantly increase trust in election outcomes. This approach can mitigate up to 4 out of the 6 percentage points of distrust caused by reporting delays.
Although prebunking may not be a panacea, when it is well-implemented and combined with other techniques such as debunking, labeling, and voter literacy, it becomes an invaluable tool for election management bodies in the fight against disinformation.