New game hopes to educate players about fake news

A few decades ago it was called propaganda, but now it's called misinformation or fake news. As reported by The Guardian, a group of Cambridge researchers have done an web browser game Bad News. The goal of this game is to become "a disinformation and fake news tycoon".

The idea behind this project is to inform people about the tactics and practices that these fake news use. The goal is of course that in the future people would learn to differentiate between real and fake news. The director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab Sander van der Linden said that "The idea is that once you've seen the tactics, and used them in the game, you build up resistance". You can play the game here.

Players of Bad News are tasked to gather a mass of virtual Twitter followers by "distorting the truth, planting falsehoods, dividing the united, and deflecting attention when rumbled". During this time it's important to maintain credibility in the eyes of a wider audience.

During the next six months, Sander van der Linden will work with a Dutch media collective Drog to gather data from the game like players' scores. The idea is, of course, to measure how well the players have learned these fake news tactics while playing the game.

What are your thoughts on fake news?