The Nub

Google’s Jigsaw subsidiary will launch a campaign next week to tackle disinformation in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic about Ukrainian refugees based on research by psychologists at two British universities.

Why Does it Matter

The research was spread over seven experiments, including with a group of Americans over 18 years old who watch political news on YouTube. Jigsaw exposed around 5.4 million U.S. YouTubers to an inoculation video, with almost a million watching for at least 30 seconds. The campaign is designed to build resilience to anti-refugee narratives, in partnership with local non-government organisations, fact checkers, academics, and disinformation experts.

What Next

“We are thinking of this as a pilot experiment, so there’s absolutely no reason that this approach couldn’t be scaled to other countries,” Beth Goldberg, head of research at Jigsaw, said in an interview. “Poland was chosen because it has the most Ukrainian refugees,” she said, adding the Czech Republic and Slovakia would be useful bellwethers for the rest of Europe.