Exploring Persuasive Tools to Enhance Digital Resilience to
                         Misinformation – Extended Abstract
                         Lana Edwards 1,2, Mirela Stjelja 1, Dragana Calic 1, Steven E. Davis 1
                         1
                                Defence Science and Technology Group, Edinburgh, SA 5111, Australia
                         2
                                University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5000, Australia

                                             Abstract
                                             Background: Misinformation can impact beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours at individual,
                                             community, and national levels. Sophisticated pre-bunking interventions, informed by
                                             psychological inoculation theory, apply the principle of vaccination to information, arguing
                                             that ‘inoculating’ individuals with a weakened form of persuasion can build immunity. This
                                             qualitative study explores participants’ perceived efficacy of three pre-bunking tools to
                                             enhance digital resilience to misinformation. We employed the Fogg Behaviour Model (FBM)
                                             to examine the tools through the lens of Persuasive Technology (PT) by considering the
                                             components of motivation, ability, and prompt.
                                             Method: By employing a qualitative design, we conducted in-person semi-structured
                                             interviews throughout August 2023, interviewing 13 Australian participants (aged 18 to 55,
                                             seven identified as female and six as male). Guided by the principles of PT and psychological
                                             inoculation theory, three tools were selected for this study: Bad Influence, Cranky Uncle, and
                                             Spotting Misinformation and Disinformation. Participation took approximately one hour and
                                             included interaction with each pre-bunking tool followed by interviews.
                                             Results: A thematic analysis identified four key themes that captured participants’ perceptions
                                             of the tools’ efficacy: 1) Tool flow related to participants’ abilities to easily follow, use, and
                                             navigate the instructions of the tools. 2) Tool design and style related to participants’ feelings
                                             toward the genre, aesthetics, and layout of the tools. 3) Key components of the tools that enabled
                                             or inhibited participants’ interactions with the tools. 4) Intended behavioural change captured
                                             the extent to which participants perceived the tools motivated them to change the way they
                                             interact with information online. While the most frequent finding focused on participants’
                                             ability to easily navigate the tools, motivation to engage with the tools was highly dependent
                                             on personal preferences. Findings further suggest that for a participant to be motivated to
                                             enhance their digital resilience, they had to receive something of tangible value from the
                                             interaction with the tools.
                                             Discussion and Conclusion: Our study introduces the novel approach of examining pre-
                                             bunking tools by employing PT and the FBM as analytical lenses. The four extracted key
                                             themes provide a useful set of principles to enable the development of new, and assessment of
                                             existing, pre-bunking tools. While the findings are based on a limited sample of Australian
                                             participants, the richness of qualitative data provides invaluable insights, and guides future
                                             research directions. As the prevalence of misinformation in online settings continues to rise,
                                             so too does the need to develop evidence-based approaches. Our findings highlight how the
                                             FBM and PT frameworks can be utilised in the design and evaluation of pre-bunking tools,
                                             paving the way for evidence-based strategies to address online misinformation.

                                             Keywords 1
                                             Pre-bunking tools, Digital resilience, Misinformation




                                 In: Kiemute Oyibo, Wenzhen Xu, Elena Vlahu-Gjorgievska (eds.): The Adjunct Proceedings of the 19 th International Conference on
                                 Persuasive Technology, April 10, 2024, Wollongong, Australia
                                 EMAIL: lana.edwards@defence.gov.au (L. Edwards); mirela.stjelja@defence.gov.au (M. Stjelja); dragana.pittas@defence.gov.au (D.
                                 Calic); steven.davis5@defence.gov.au (S. E. Davis);
                                 ORCID: 0009-0003-2676-0008 (M. Stjelja); 0000-0002-1314-5191 (D. Calic); 0000-0003-4570-934X (S. E. Davis)
                                              ©️ 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
                                              Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
                                              CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)


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