Effects of Prebunking Interventions on Misinformation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Misinformation on the internet and social media poses an increasingly serious threat to multiple domains of society. This meta-analysis evaluates the overall effectiveness of inoculation-based strategies by synthesizing findings from 40 studies published between 2020 and 2024, comprising a total of 85,373 participants. We assessed the impact of these interventions on two key outcomes: perceived credibility of misleading content and the self-reported likelihood of sharing it. Our findings show that inoculation interventions yield significant short-term effects, reducing both perceived credibility (d = 0.35; 95% CI: 0.22 to 0.48; 𝑝 < 0.001) and willingness to share misinformation (d = 0.23; 95% CI: 0.12 to 0.35; p < 0.001). We examined potential moderators including age, gender, country, treatment type, data collection method, and study design. Our results offer robust empirical support for the short-term efficacy of prebunking strategies and underscore the importance of tailoring interventions to different age groups.