Inoculation against conspiracy theories: A consumer side approach to India's fake news problem

We attempt to replicate Roozenbeek and van der Linden's Western-based study in India by employing the Bad News Game, an online game, in which players take on the role of a misinformation tycoon. They are exposed to weakened doses of the strategies employed in conspiracy and fake news production with the aim to cognitively inoculate them against misinformation. The proliferation of inexpensive mobile connections coupled with a lack of digital literacy has resulted in a conspiratorial pandemic in developing countries like India. We test the game's impact on an Indian sample (n = 1002) using a within-subject design. We provide evidence of significant improvement in the ability of participants to identify the misinformation produced using Conspiracy, Impersonation, and to a lesser extent, the Discrediting technique, while observing greater truth discernment in correctly identifying true news. We also conduct sub-sample analyses. These findings have positive implications for methods that protect users from malignant online content.