Balliace

Considering the unfortunate presence of misinformation prevalent in today’s online landscape, it is essential for individuals to gain an understanding of how to spot false narratives during each digital journey.

Moving toward more accurately identifying misinformation across the web does not need to be a solemn and dull activity. Instead, several tools and games exist to assist in this pursuit.

Out of several colorful ways to educate the public, News Literacy Project‘s RumorGuard & Harmony Square are especially special educational tools that share the same purpose in denouncing misinformation.

RumorGuard is user friendly website, filled with graphics and fact-checked content that dispels misinformation circulating in current events. The site contains up to date information, dispelling rumors from the confirmation of UFOS to falsified videos of natural disasters.

The site matches rumors against its precise 5 Factor system:

1. Source
2. Evidence
3. Context
4. Reasoning
5. Authenticity

By heavily watermarking their images and further marking them as false, RumorGuard does its part in preventing the spread of misinformation. If these photos were to be reposted, it would only serve as good. With current data and easily digestible graphics, it makes for an excellent resource.

Another great tool is a lovely game named Harmony Square.

*Screenshots and SPOILERS ahead*

In short, the game is an amalgamation of a Choose Your Own Adventure meets Role Play Game (you must choose a character to play as) and it will lead you to act out some unlovely fictional scenarios. From interesting insults and ruining the reputation of others, the aim of the game is for the player to spread misinformation. It helps you understand the reasoning behind this if you don’t at first feel comfortable with the idea.

The art style is charming and scientists helped create it! The About section (lower left) explains, “Scientists who worked with us on the development of this game found that playing Harmony Square improves people’s ability to spit manipulation techniques in social media posts, increases their confidence in spotting such techniques, and reduces their willingness to share manipulative content with people in their network. The results of this study were published in the journal Harvard Misinformation Review, and can be found here.”

Along the way, I was told I mastered several techniques, which were:

• Trolling: “Expressing extreme or polarizing opinions.. evoke a highly emotional response.”
• Emotion: “Large volumes of emotionally charged content.. you can certainly help decide what they think about.”
• Amplification: “Artificially boosted the reach… thinking you have more support than you really do.”
• Escalation: “You divided.. pitted them against each other.”

In the end, it said I scored well. What was your score? Leave a comment below!~

The aforementioned Misinformation Review supports the game in its article “Breaking Harmony Square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation“ where it is stated, “Over the course of 4 levels, players learn about 5 manipulation techniques commonly used in the spread of political media content: trolling, using emotional language, polarizing audiences, spreading conspiracy theories, and artificially amplifying the reach of their content through bots and fake likes.”

What is most striking is that it was shown, “People who played Harmony Square are significantly less likely to report sharing manipulative social media content with others.” Although an article from May 2020, Misinformation Review stated, “Additional support is needed for the curricular integration of games in general, and news literacy games in particular,” this game has been shown to improve discernment.

The game shocked me at how easily bot accounts raided comment sections and spread misinformation. It was surprising to learn how likes can be artificially inflated. I am certain I will double check before passing media along to others in the future.