Unhealthy Information: A Sport About The ‘Success’ Of Faux Information

by Terry Heick

Need to assist college students study to assume critically about ‘pretend information’? A easy, browser-based recreation might assist.

What’s Unhealthy Information? Unhealthy Information is a straightforward software to assist college students perceive ‘pretend information,’ the (fashionable?) phenomenon of misinformation and ‘content material as information’ propagated, at the least partially, by the rise of digital and social media.

(You’ll be able to obtain an information sheet about made for educators.)

As an interactive expertise, Unhealthy Information helps college students perceive how pretend information works, why it turns into widespread, and its central mechanics and traits. It then permits gamers to decide on sure pretend information methods, together with emotional appeals, sarcasm, pink herrings, private assaults, and conspiracy theories.

It additionally introduces the ideas of content material varieties by permitting gamers to decide on between pretend information memes, photoshopped pictures, or precise ‘content material’ (information tales and articles, and many others.), with some methods (private assaults) and varieties (memes) working higher than others relying on the pretend information matter.

Couple this with our The Cognitive Bias Codex: A Visible Of 180+ Cognitive Biases and you may have the beginnings of a crash course in vital pondering on-line.

Taking part in Unhealthy Information: Strengths And Weaknesses

Whereas I extremely advocate the sport as a instructing software, I gave Unhealthy Information a few play-throughs and bumped into a couple of areas the expertise might be improved–initially, the ‘score’ mechanic that asks customers to price the reliability of sure social media posts.

Whereas it is sensible in idea, in observe, it’s unclear precisely what you’re evaluating the reliability of: the social media publish, the consumer who shared the publish, or the framing of the content material within the publish.

It’s additionally not meant to be a full-on learning-about-fake-news simulation, so it’s pretty skinny by way of what you’re capable of really do from a mechanics standpoint–which limits among the utility and might go away it feeling a bit like a drawn-out finger wag at social media use basically.

That mentioned, when the sport is at its greatest–letting you select between heinous disinformation ways so as to acquire ‘credibility’–it’s arduous to not shake your head in disbelief at how little vital pondering we observe each day in our lives. And faux information and social media are possibly only a microcosm.

The sport is straightforward sufficient that you simply don’t want directions and if gamers make a mistake, it’s quick sufficient to simply begin over. As a form of simulation, it’s paying homage to Plague, Inc., a sense bolstered by Unhealthy Information builders acknowledged mission of ‘vaccinat(ing) the world in opposition to disinformation.”

If you wish to introduce college students to the thought of faux information and the ways utilized by media publishers to vary consumer’s perceptions about information–and in flip, actuality itself–it’s an excellent little software to get began.