by Terry Heick
Need to assist college students be taught to assume critically about ‘pretend information’? A easy, browser-based sport might assist.
What’s Dangerous Information? Dangerous Information is a straightforward device to assist college students perceive ‘pretend information,’ the (fashionable?) phenomenon of misinformation and ‘content material as information’ propagated, a minimum of partly, by the rise of digital and social media.
(You may obtain an data sheet about made for educators.)
As an interactive expertise, Dangerous Information helps college students perceive how pretend information works, why it turns into widespread, and its central mechanics and developments. 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 so on.), 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 could possibly have the beginnings of a crash course in vital pondering on-line.
Enjoying Dangerous Information: Strengths And Weaknesses
Whereas I extremely suggest the sport as a educating device, I gave Dangerous Information a few play-throughs and bumped into just a few areas the expertise might be improved–initially, the ‘score’ mechanic that asks customers to fee the reliability of sure social media posts.
Whereas it is sensible in idea, in follow, it’s unclear precisely what you’re evaluating the reliability of: the social media put up, the consumer who shared the put up, or the framing of the content material within the put up.
It’s additionally not meant to be a full-on learning-about-fake-news simulation, so it’s pretty skinny when it comes to what you’re in a position to truly do from a mechanics standpoint–which limits a few of the utility and might depart it feeling a bit like a drawn-out finger wag at social media use basically.
That stated, when the sport is at its greatest–letting you select between heinous disinformation ways in an effort to acquire ‘credibility’–it’s onerous to not shake your head in disbelief at how little vital pondering we follow each day in our lives. And pretend information and social media are perhaps 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 only begin over. As a sort of simulation, it’s paying homage to Plague, Inc., a sense bolstered by Dangerous Information builders acknowledged 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 consumer’s perceptions about information–and in flip, actuality itself–it’s an excellent little device to get began.
