IN today’s information age, false claims can quickly cause real harm, such as shaping elections, fuelling health crises, and eroding trust in public institutions.
To address this, fact-checkers and actors in the disinformation space often turn to two key strategies: prebunking and debunking.
While the terms may sound alike, their timing and impact differ significantly, and understanding this distinction is vital to strengthening a resilient information ecosystem.
What is Debunking?
Debunking is the process of correcting misinformation after it has already spread and gained traction. It’s reactive, meaning fact-checkers or journalists step in once a false claim is circulating, investigate it, and provide credible evidence to set the record straight.
Debunking can be understood as a form of damage control. Once a falsehood has already circulated and gained traction, the objective is to minimise further harm by exposing the truth and providing accurate information.
Clear examples include the spread of misinformation and disinformation during Nigeria’s 2023 general elections, many of which were debunked by The FactCheckHub [see here, here, and here].
Similarly, in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, The FactCheckHub fact-checked numerous claims ranging from supposed cures for the virus to vaccine-related falsehoods designed to discourage uptake once vaccines became available.
Citing the World Health Organization (WHO), our researchers demonstrated that these claims lacked any scientific basis. This too was debunking correcting falsehoods only after they had already circulated widely.
What is Prebunking?
Prebunking, in contrast, is proactive. It anticipates the types of misinformation likely to appear and equips people with the knowledge to spot and resist them.
Think of it like a vaccine; instead of waiting until people are infected by false information, prebunking prepares them in advance.
Ahead of elections, fact-checkers can write tutorials and explainers that would educate the electorate ahead of the day and how to identify potential misinformation.
In health, prebunking is equally powerful. Ahead of vaccination campaigns or outbreaks, organisations might warn that common misinformation, such as claims that vaccines cause infertility, etc, will circulate online. When people later encounter such posts, they are more likely to reject them because they were already warned.
By doing this, prebunking helps citizens become more sceptical of suspicious content before they even encounter it.
Both approaches are essential, but their effectiveness differs. According to the American Psychological Association, prebunking can reduce the spread of falsehoods by making people more resistant to them in the first place. Debunking, while necessary, often struggles because misinformation travels faster than corrections and tends to leave lasting impressions even after it has been disproven.
