“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
(Hemingway, 1961)
Social media has brought about an attention economy in which polarisation, extremism, and conflict are now the primary factors that attract the public’s fleeting concentration. Since the 2016 US elections, there has been an explosion in the proliferation of online fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. Actions taken during President Trump’s administration, the worsening climate emergency, and the emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic have further reinforced an information landscape where fragile truths are increasingly hard to discern from forceful falsehoods.
Many initiatives are now attempting to tackle fake news. These include systems to automate the identification of fake news, automatic and crowd-sourced fact-checking and labelling systems, methods to seek out and provide alternative viewpoints, legislation of social media platforms, and a wide variety of educational initiatives.
One exciting development is the emergence of educational games that engage the public in learning about fake news in novel and interesting ways. While ostensibly functioning as entertainment, these games also serve more serious goals, echoing the sentiments of Scarfe (1962):
“The highest form of research is essentially play.”
Scarfe (1962)
In a new article here, I discuss ten online free-to-play games that seek to address fake news. I address the theory behind how these games work and consider each game’s strengths and weaknesses. The games discussed are:
- Harmony Square
- Bad News
- Go Viral
- Fake It to Make It
- Postfacto
- Factitious and Factitious Pandemic Edition
- BBC iReporter
- Fakey
- Play Interland
- Learn to Discern
While all of these games support the battle against fake news, there are some notable gaps in the issues they address. Future games could, for example, consider incorporating strategic campaigns that are coordinated across multiple platforms, adversarial competition between fake news and counter-fake news activities, opportunities for the player to learn valuable lessons from campaign failures, and in-game capabilities to respond to fake news.
Where current games succeed, however, is in enabling the public to learn more about the complex (and not always stimulating!) topic of fake news in simple, engaging, and entertaining ways.
The full article can be read here.
References
Hemingway, E. (1961, 11th July). About Hemingway. New York Journal American.
Scarfe, N. V. (1962). Play Is Education. Childhood Education, 39(3), 117-121.