For Communities

What this section provides

Complete session plans rather than talking points. Each guide gives timings, what to print, what to say in the opening minutes, and what to do when the discussion turns into an argument about the underlying issue rather than about method. They assume the facilitator is not an expert and does not intend to become one first.

Four design principles

These run through every guide here, and they come from a reading of the available evidence set out in ourreview of what the research supports.

• Teach a method, not a verdict. A session that arrives at a conclusion about a contested claim teaches participants that the point was to reach the right answer, and those who arrived with a different view will conclude, correctly, that they were the target.
• One procedure, taught to fluency. Better than five techniques covered briefly. Depth transfers; coverage does not.
• Open with the mechanism. False content spreads mainly through ordinary sharing rather than primarily through automated accounts. That framing puts the room inside the problem rather than opposite it.
• Measure something. Six headline classifications before and after a session take five minutes and give your organization evidence about its own community, which no published study can supply for you.

A note on language

We suggest avoiding the words misinformation, disinformation, and fake news in promotional material. They read as politically positioned to a substantial part of any public audience, and they reduce attendance among exactly the people the programme is for. Describing the skill works better than describing the threat.