The new 5-7 minute game introduces players to the basics of online manipulation in the era of coronavirus. It acts as a simple guide to common techniques: using emotionally charged language to stoke outrage and fear, deploying fake experts to sow doubt, and mining conspiracies for social media Likes.
“By using a simulated environment to show people how misinformation is produced, we can demystify it,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, co-developer of Go Viral! and researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Psychology. “The game empowers people with the tools they need to discern fact from fiction.”
Go Viral! is based on a pre-COVID iteration, Bad News, which has been played over a million times since its 2018 launch. Cambridge researchers developed and tested Bad News, and found that just one play reduced perceived reliability of fake news by an average of 21% compared to a control group.
Bad News: the game
Bad News: the game
The research team, including DROG and designers Gusmanson (who also worked on Go Viral!), argue that this neutralising effect can contribute to a societal resistance to fake news when played by many thousands of people.
These initial results were confirmed in an even more rigorous replication study published in January this year. “Our pre-bunk game not only improved people’s ability to spot fake news but also their confidence in judging what is true or false,” said Melisa Basol, a Cambridge Gates Scholar who led the study.
“This confidence boost only occurred for those who got better at accurately identifying misinformation," she said.