by Terry Heick
Need to assist college students be taught to assume critically about ‘pretend information’? A easy, browser-based sport may assist.
What’s Dangerous Information? Dangerous Information is a straightforward device to assist college students perceive ‘pretend information,’ the (trendy?) phenomenon of misinformation and ‘content material as information’ propagated, at the least partly, by the rise of digital and social media.
(You possibly can obtain an information 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 tendencies. 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 matter.
Couple this with our The Cognitive Bias Codex: A Visible Of 180+ Cognitive Biases and you possibly can have the beginnings of a crash course in crucial pondering on-line.
Taking part in Dangerous Information: Strengths And Weaknesses
Whereas I extremely suggest the sport as a instructing device, I gave Dangerous Information a few play-throughs and bumped into a number of areas the expertise might be improved–in the beginning, the ‘ranking’ mechanic that asks customers to price the reliability of sure social media posts.
Whereas it is sensible in idea, in apply, 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 when it comes to what you’re capable of really do from a mechanics standpoint–which limits a number of the utility and might depart it feeling a bit like a drawn-out finger wag at social media use on the whole.
That mentioned, when the sport is at its greatest–letting you select between heinous disinformation ways with the intention to achieve ‘credibility’–it’s arduous to not shake your head in disbelief at how little crucial pondering we apply each day in our lives. And faux 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 simply begin over. As a form of simulation, it’s paying homage to Plague, Inc., a sense strengthened by Dangerous Information builders acknowledged mission of ‘vaccinat(ing) the world towards disinformation.”
If you wish to introduce college students to the concept of pretend information and the ways utilized by media publishers to vary person’s perceptions about information–and in flip, actuality itself–it’s an excellent little device to get began.
