by Terry Heick
Wish to assist college students study to assume critically about ‘pretend information’? A easy, browser-based recreation may assist.
What’s Dangerous Information? Bad News is a straightforward instrument to assist college students perceive ‘pretend information,’ the (trendy?) phenomenon of misinformation and ‘content material as information’ propagated, no less than partly, by the rise of digital and social media.
(You may download an info sheet about made for educators.)
As an interactive expertise, Dangerous Information helps college students perceive how pretend information works, why it turns into in style, and its central mechanics and traits. It then permits gamers to decide on sure pretend information methods, together with emotional appeals, sarcasm, purple herrings, private assaults, and conspiracy theories.
It additionally introduces the ideas of content material types by permitting gamers to decide on between pretend information memes, photoshopped photos, or precise ‘content material’ (information tales and articles, and many others.), with some methods (private assaults) and types (memes) working higher than others relying on the pretend information subject.
Couple this with our The Cognitive Bias Codex: A Visible Of 180+ Cognitive Biases and you could possibly have the beginnings of a crash course in crucial considering on-line.
Enjoying Dangerous Information: Strengths And Weaknesses
Whereas I extremely suggest the sport as a instructing instrument, I gave Dangerous Information a few play-throughs and bumped into a number of areas the expertise might be improved–before everything, the ‘ranking’ mechanic that asks customers to fee the reliability of sure social media posts.
Whereas it is smart in idea, in follow, it’s unclear precisely what you’re evaluating the reliability of: the social media publish, the person 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 in a position to really do from a mechanics standpoint–which limits a number of the utility and might go away it feeling a bit like a drawn-out finger wag at social media use typically.
That stated, when the sport is at its greatest–letting you select between heinous disinformation ways with the intention to achieve ‘credibility’–it’s exhausting to not shake your head in disbelief at how little crucial considering we follow every 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 brief sufficient to simply begin over. As a sort of simulation, it’s paying homage to Plague, Inc., a sense bolstered by Dangerous Information builders said mission of ‘vaccinat(ing) the world towards disinformation.”
If you wish to introduce college students to the concept of faux information and the ways utilized by media publishers to alter person’s perceptions about information–and in flip, actuality itself–it’s an excellent little instrument to get began.
