Learning Misinformation by Doing: The Evaluation of RumorGuard and Bad News

Addressing “bad actors in information ecosystems”, be it misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes, etc. — is an increasingly complex task for a few key reasons:

1) it spreads rapidly

2) it appeals to emotions over facts;

3) it can look credible to the uninformed.

Given these challenges, educational interventions that aim to tackle misinformation need to be thoughtful about how to slow down, educate, and even media literate users. For this post, I’ll be exploring two interventions tackling misinformation in different ways: educational materials and activities from the News Literacy Project called RumorGuard and a browser-based game called Bad News that teaches you how to spread “bad news” to teach media literacy. These two are both good in their own ways but suit different goals. RumorGuard teaches people how to verify a few key claims they hear, while Bad News teaches people to recognize the general tactics that false information uses to spread.

RumorGuard: learning through real examples

RumorGuard is a program that teaches media literacy skills to verification by addressing current online issues with the spread of misinformation. It can serve as a great starting point for a class discussion, and allows a student to read through a current rumor and compare it to the evidence used to debunk it and see how and why it was false. Using a step by step approach that incorporates real world examples and scenarios, users learn how to fact-check through practice of the process rather than learning about the concept abstractly. While users are taught a lot about how to verify information, RumorGuard is a guided program that has users read and reflect on a variety of scenarios, but makes decisions outside of the program. RumorGuard is not infallible at identifying urban legends, but it is an effective educational tool which presents users with stories and asks them to follow the steps most people take to verify and trace the origin of a given piece of information. The site is organized by topic and by type of rumor.

Bad News: learning through inoculation

Bad News is different from other anti-misinformation apps because it does not attempt to identify and flag “fake news.” Instead, it helps users produce “fake news.” Created by researchers from the Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge University, the app is an experimental “misinformation intervention” game that aims to “vaccinate” players against misinformation by exposing them to “diluted versions of the strategies that actually work.” Players learn 6 tactics of misinformation – from attempts to polarize people to attempts to emotionally manipulate them – as well as how to present “breaking news” as factual, behave as a “troll,” change the subject when asked a question, and assume another person’s identity. By engaging with these tactics, players are said to develop some “mental antibodies” that will help them resist these same tactics in real life.

I recently read about the game Bad News which teaches players about the processes of misinformation, not just correction. It explores why some misinformation is based in fact, and why some misinformation is spread on purpose because it elicits an emotional response. According to the site, playing Bad News helps players be able to recognize the techniques used to spread misinformation as well as having players be more confident in identifying those techniques than a control group. I haven’t played it yet, but I like what I see. I’m curious to see if players would continue to identify tactics of misinformation in the long term, as well as playing it multiple times (Maybe it could be played on a daily or weekly basis as a “booster”?). This tool is pretty useful for a couple of things but is not a full solution.

Final thoughts!!!

I enjoy exploring interactive games and tools for learning about misinformation. Interactive educational games and programs can engage students and independent learners in exploring complex issues of misinformation. For fact-checking practice, RumorGuard is a nice, guided verification exercise for individuals to practice identifying fact from fiction in a guided scenario. For understanding how misinformation works and how it can affect individuals, I find that Bad News is a really powerful tool to expose users to the core tactics used to spread misinformation online and why they work so well. This isn’t just about recognizing individual “fake” posts or articles but understanding the dynamics of misinformation. It’s about 5 simple habits I keep to a healthy, happy lifestyle, in case you were wondering!