Before You “Get” It: Pre-Bunking

We have all been hearing about the push by social media companies to debunk the conspiracy stories on their sites. At least talk about debunking them or at least blocking them. But have you heard the phrase, “pre-bunking?”

This refers to getting out, ahead of the curve, with the truth before the fake news attacks the announcements. In an Oct. 27, 2020 article on Axios, they report that notices are being posted in Twitter ahead any wave of fake news. In a new line of attack, they identify the source (not the story) of what may be unreliable, questionable media sites on the topic. This hopefully alerts and informs the user about what they are about to read.

The founder of the company, NewsGuard (The Internet Trust Tool), said “"The benefit of pre-bunking is people see a label or post indicating why the source may not be trustworthy, not the article itself.” Some, like Facebook are listing alternative sources or news reports to balance the misinformation news stories. I will do a future story which will examine tools, like NewsGuard, to see how they are helpful.