UK’s Nudge Unit and UNSW Launch “Prebunking” Framework to Counter Refugee, Migrant, and Pro-Trump Immigration Narratives

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by Didi Rankovic, Reclaim The Net:

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – a company with ties to the British and other governments and originally known as the “Nudge Unit” – has teamed up with researchers from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney.

The result is a report titled, “Countering misinformation about refugees and migrants: An evidence-based framework,” which was presented on March 11 during a speed briefing event.

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The goal of the collaboration is to develop a framework that would allow for “prebunking misinformation” about migrants and refugees in Australia.

Unlike debunking, which is supposed to correct false information, “prebunking” is a dystopian concept of an “arbiter of truth” controlling the narrative by influencing how people perceive information about certain topics, in essence, “training” the public in advance to react to information in the desired way.

A decision tree diagram titled 'Decision tree for countering misinformation' starting with a decision point labeled 'Misinformation is...'. It branches into 'Expected' leading to the strategy 'Prebunk' with a structure of 'Motivational warning and refutational preemption'. The other branch labeled 'Already out there' leads to a decision point asking 'Is the misinformation prominent, persuasive and proximate?'. If yes, it leads to the strategy 'Debunk' with the structure 'Fact, Myth, Fallacy, Fact'. If no, it leads to the strategy 'Reframe the agenda' with the structure 'Amplify stories you want to tell'. A legend shows decision points in orange, strategies in blue, and structures of the strategy in teal.

The Kaldor Centre wants to influence public opinion against what the framework labels as misinformation about migrants and refugees, but also the so-called “Trump-style” immigration policies.

While announcing the report, this research organization shared that it hopes it will be put to use not only in Australia but also in other countries facing similar issues.

“We all need to fight misinformation in our conversations about refugees and migration, but sometimes we struggle to find the right response. This framework takes the guesswork out of it,” said Kaldor Centre Director Daniel Ghezelbash.

The partner in this endeavor, BIT, is closely associated not only with the British government – that created the “Nudge Unit” in 2010, and then four years later formed a separate company while maintaining a one-third ownership stake.

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