Can We Teach Digital Media Literacy Through Games?

I recently got to test out a few different digital tools. Each of these is an initiative aimed at educating the public about misinformation. The first is the News Literacy Project's RumorGuard. This tool is similar to factcheck.org which is a project run by UPenn, and Snopes, which is run by two private entrepreneurs. What's nice about RumorGuard in relation to these other tools is that it doesn't just explain whether something is real or fake, it equips readers with tools to decipher for themselves what is real and fake. Equipping people with knowledge and resources against misinformation is really crucial. However, I do feel that there is more which can be done on a systemic level to combat misinformation. In the same way that some climate activists have recently started to push back against the idea that people must stop larger environmental issues through individual actions, I believe that it's important for everyday people to push back against misinformation, while simultaneously understanding that disinformation is a large-scale issue that not go away on it's own. I often feel that disability is left out of conversations about media literacy, and I think that it's important to recognize how disability can impair a person's ability to adequately distinguish between misinformation and a credible headline.

For this reason, I really appreciated the three media literacy games that we learned about this week; Bad News, Breaking Harmony Square, and Fake it to Make it. These games all emphasized how all kinds of resources, strategies, and efforts are put into creating disinformation. They showed how many complex tools are used to target people, and I think that this is an important lesson for kids and adults to learn when it comes to media literacy. While we were only required to review one of these games, I chose to try them all out. I found Bad News and Breaking Harmony Square to be quite similar. Both games utilized a "choose your own adventure" approach, which I think worked well, and both emphasized teaching people various strategies that are used to manipulate audiences through gameplay.

Screenshots from Bad News and Breaking Harmony Square that illustrate the similarities in acquiring skills.

The game "Fake it to make it" was my favorite. Like the other two games, it had a storyline where a you choose a character and then build a fake news empire with that character. However, it had many features which made the gameplay more compelling, and also made it feel more like a day in the life of someone who works in content creation for a blog, except all of the stories are pre-written, and they are designed to be misinformation, rather than simply clickbait. I was also surprised at how difficult this game was in comparison to the other two games. I think part of why it was more difficult was because when you would post a fake article, the fake online commenters wouldn't necessarily like it. This reminded me of what things are actually like in social media. When you work in content creation and you post a new project online, you always hold you breath a bit when it uploads, thinking, "is this going to get any views? are people going to appreciate my hard work?" Oftentimes, a video or article won't get a lot of views, especially if it's not sensationalized. This in turn contributes to how many misleading and misinformed pieces of content are out there.

An example of what successful engagement looks like within the game Fake It To Make It

Another thing that (sadly) felt realistic about the game to me was that happy articles seemed to get a lot fewer views and shares, while hateful ones seemed to get a lot more.

The article in the game about the president's religion went on to make over $100 for the website.

Another feature which this game had and the other two didn't was a credibility index for the website, that you could actively improve on. Throughout the game, my website's credibility score went from 30 to 61, which was interesting to watch and take part in. To achieve this, I had to make sure that the fake news I was posting in the game was all from the "same side". The two political parties were labelled as orange and purple, which seemed like a nice touch.

Overall I found this game to be realy enjoyable, and I think it's an excellent tool for educating more people about digital media literacy. I hope that it continues to be updated, because it's an excellent resource.