FAKE NEWS “VACCINE”

Fake news has been treated as serious issue that can harm society and the psychological well being of people. To prove that Dutch media organization “DROG” in collaboration with University of Cambridge scientists Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden help you become more media aware by playing a game called “Bad News” and at the same time it has a social impact. The game has been described by the media as a “fake news vaccine”. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarization, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. The game draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarizing people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation.

The rapid spread of “fake news” and online misinformation is a growing threat to the democratic process (Lewandowsky, Ecker, and Cook, 2017; van der Linden, et al., 2017a; Iyengar and Massey, 2018), and can have serious consequences for evidence-based decision making on a variety of societal issues, ranging from climate change and vaccinations to international relations (Poland and Spier, 2010; van der Linden, 2017; van der Linden et al., 2017b; Lazer et al., 2018). In some countries, the rapid spread of online misinformation is posing an additional, physical danger, sometimes leading to injury and even death. For example, false kidnapping rumors on WhatsApp have led to mob lynchings in India (BBC News, 2018a; Phartiyal, Patnaik, and Ingram, 2018).[1]

Fake News in the classroom

Many scholars, media outlets, politicians even teachers have suggested that children especially teenagers should learn about fake news in order not to be a victim of it. Fact checking can be tricky, accordingly many developing tools that would help people to tackle fake news can be a very important tool for society, an example for such a tool is the game “Bad News”. So far, thousands of people have played the 15-minute game, and an analysis of 15,000 of those results has now been published. While the game did not change how participants perceived real news, they were, on average, 21 percent better at determining the reliability of fake news after they had played. This suggests that the game does not just make participants more skeptical; it also trains them to notice specific deception strategies. Even better, those who were more susceptible to fake news headlines at the beginning of the game appeared to benefit the most from this ‘psychological inoculation’.

“We find that just fifteen minutes of game play has a moderate effect, but a practically meaningful one when scaled across thousands of people worldwide, if we think in terms of building societal resistance to fake news,” says van der Linden.[2] The study published in the journal Palgrave Communications showed that playing “Bad News” helped users to develop “mental antibodies” against fake news. The results showed that players were 21 percent less likely to believe fake news than they were before they played the game. The team has translated the game into nine languages, including German, Serbian, Polish and Greek in partnership with Britain’s foreign ministry, and WhatsApp has commissioned a new game for the messaging platform, CDSMLab said.[3]

Would you play the game?

Meral Musli Tajroska – a psychologist, an expert on violent extremism and radicalism and a woman rights activist

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0279-9

[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-simple-online-game-works-like-a-vaccine-against-fake-news

[3] https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/06/25/online-game-helps-fight-the-spread-of-fake-news-study.html