The Anti-Rumours Strategy focuses on how stereotypes and prejudice are created and, above all, on how to reduce their negative impact. It is a long-term process of social change to prevent discrimination, improve coexistence, and harness the potential for diversity by triggering a change in perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours among the general population and specific target groups. It was first promoted in 2010 in Barcelona as one of the actions of the city’s Intercultural Plan.

Understood as a public policy, the Anti-Rumours strategy is composed of a number of elements: identifying major rumours existing in a city; collecting objective data and also emotional arguments to dismantle false rumours; creating an anti-rumour network of local actors from civil society; empowering and training “anti-rumour agents”; and designing and implementing anti-rumour campaigns to raise awareness, including by creating and disseminating new tools and resources, both creative and rigorous.