A Mild Approach to Prebunking Health Misinformation in Social Media: Digital Nudging

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe governance of health misinformation has been a hot topic in both social practice and academic research. Due to its proactive and timely nature, prebunking represents an emerging and efficacious intervention. However, previous research on prebunking primarily focuses on presenting arguments or techniques to the public in a direct and coercive manner, which remains limited in its scope and efficacy. This study aims to implement prebunking in social media by utilizing a milder approach, namely digital nudging. We conduct a web‐based pre‐experiment to test the effectiveness of warning, social and disclosure nudge, and obtain data from 104 participants. The preliminary results show that the warning and social nudge can mitigate the credibility of misinformation and decrease individual's sharing likelihood. Furthermore, eHealth literacy acts as the moderator in the impact of social nudge. This study broadens the comprehensions of the misinformation governance and digital nudging, and furnishes practical implications for the implementation of prebunking in social media.