Activity 1 - Hook - How to escape the rabbit hole?

What is the “rabbit hole”? In the words of Mick West: “The phrase comes from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Alice enters the bizarre Wonderland by following a white rabbit down a hole.
In recent times a more specific usage has arisen, derived from the 1999 film The Matrix, where at a crucial point Morpheus offers Neo a choice. He can either take the blue pill and return to a normal life, or take the red pill and “see how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo, of course, “takes the red pill,” and the “rabbit hole” leads him to discover the true nature of the world. He “wakes up” from his programmed illusion of comfortable, bland monotony into a brutal yet genuine struggle for existence, a messianic battle against evil, manipulating overlords. This terminology has been directly adopted by various conspiracy communities. The rabbit hole is seen as a good place to be, a place where the true nature of the world is revealed.

Beliefs in different conspiracy theories tend to reinforce each other, cutting a person off from other people, until they surround themselves with a like minded crowd. This has been a well-known fact for a considerable period of time. What is more problematic, however, is the fact that social media tend to produce a very similar effect for any kind of strongly held belief.

So how to help people out of the rabbit hole, if almost everyone is stuck in one?

There are a few steps that could help, although no universal solution is available. The decision in what kind of theories to believe is ultimately a personal one – no amount of external pressure could force a person to change their convictions. The role of an external person – a friend, teacher, youth worker, parent – can be only one of a partner. We can listen, discuss, provide information, reach out a hand – but it is up to the other person to take it.

Below you will find a list of training activities you can implement with your class/young people with the purpose of gaining knowledge and abilities dealing with various aspects related to conspiracy theories.

The activity makes use of the principles of gamified, quiz-based learning, as well as peer learning.

Quizzes are a great method to stimulate curiosity and engagement. Quizzes help students learn, because these tasks involve retrieval practice, or thinking back to information previously learned and bringing it to mind. This is clearly evidenced by cognitive psychology, which identified a wide range of benefits, especially in regard to formal education settings. But also in informal learning, some of these benefits are relevant and valid.

Peer learning essentially refers to students learning with and from each other as fellow learners without any implied authority to any individual.

This methodology is used to present how people are affected in practice by the Dunning-Kruger effect. A person who is not an expert in a given field is likely to underestimate how complicated that field is and as a result overestimate their ability to grasp minute details of the subject in question. This is important, because very few of us are experts in more than one areas – meaning that in most aspects of human knowledge we are in the exact position of “poor performers in many intellectual domains” – we simply don’t know enough in order to understand how complicated things really are.

By creating their own quizzes and testing their peers, learners appreciate how easy it can be to get the facts wrong if someone is actively trying to mislead you.

After completing this activity, learners will:

Increase their awareness of the prevalence of misinformation
Become familiar with some of the mechanisms of manipulation
Develop their critical thinking skills
Increase their motivation to resist being manipulated

a computer or smartphone for each learner
projector
whiteboard

70 min.

4 - 16 person

Intermediary (the ability to set-up quizzes required).

You can start the activity by inviting learners to take part in the Factfulness Quiz by Hans Rosling:
https://factfulnessquiz.com/

Another similar quiz can be used instead - it is important that the obvious answers chosen by the majority are wrong.

It will introduce the concept of quiz-based learning, but also reveal the limitation of the participants' own knowledge. It should be pointed out that getting the wrong answers is hardly unique - the participants systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.
10 min.

1. Learners will work individually on a computer (recommended) or Smartphone. We propose using the free quiz maker by Canva (https://www.canva.com/design/DAFt3XPcucw/rShdxr70zM4o7J6A2vkV-Q/edit), but any other platform or app can be used. Each learner has to create a quiz of 6 questions related to a topic they find interesting. These topics can be related to politics, society etc., and preferably focus on little known (or purposefully hidden, if the learner is more suspicious of official sources) facts. The goal is to make all answers plausible, so it is not immediately clear which one is the correct one.
20 min.

2. Through the projector and whiteboard, each quiz is in turn presented to the group, and learners try to guess the correct answers. It is recommended that scores are kept, so that the ones who managed to get the most correct answers are identified.
30 min.

Learners vote on the best quiz design. They discuss why the answers were so hard to guess for that quiz. They also share different strategies that helped them uncover the truth.
10 min.

The entire activity can be delivered online without modifications.

E-learning uncovered: How to Create E-Learning Quizzes That Engage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaPKi0GGRZ4

In particular, of interest can be:

Examples of pointless questions and questions to avoid the beginning – 7:15
Reasons for incorporating quizzes into our learning: 8:25 - 11:30
Writing good and appropriate quiz questions that also relate to your learning objectives: 15:45 - 26:00
Writing good answers that are all plausible and could potentially be correct: 26:00 to 30:45

Dunning, David (2011). Chapter Five – The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One's Own Ignorance. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 44. Academic Press. pp. 247–296.

The Factfulness Quiz by Hans Rosling:
https://factfulnessquiz.com/

Quizzes on Canva:
https://www.canva.com/create/quizzes/

What is a conspiracy theory?

The information bubble

Why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

Fact checking

What is critical thinking?

How to escape the rabbit hole?

How to escape the rabbit hole?

Activity 1 - Hook