Evaluating Misinformation and Educational Tools...

Misinformation is not a subject that is touched on often. In fact, I think we as humans just assume everything we see is true. Now that isn't fully true, however, you probably would have read that sentence and would have been like... yeah makes sense.

Did you know there are actually interactive sites and games you can play that educate you on misinformation and how it is spread? A few of those sites are Breaking Harmony Square, Bad News, and Fake It To Make It.

For the purpose of explaining how the educational sites work, we will go over Breaking Harmony Square and Bad News. I actually ended up trying all three to get a better understanding of how they work, but Fake it to make it was extremely drawn out and just felt like a lot of work for an educational site.

When you first start Bad News, this is what it looks like. Essentially the name of the game is gaining as many followers as you can by spreading misinformation through an alias.

When you begin, you start with 0 followers and hardly any credibility. You then choose what to post to receive credibility and followers throughout the game.

The second objective is to then impersonate a legit profile. If you look closely you will see that the A in Nasa has the double dots above which is what makes it not the real deal.

The final objective that you carry throughout the rest of the game is creating a fake news site that you will use to post all of your information to get more and more followers and credibility.

There are six levels of the game that you are walked through and educated on. Impersonation, Emotion, Polarization, Conspiracy, Discredit, and Trolling. The game teaches you how each of these areas works and how when understood people can make mistakes or get really worked up about different subjects.

The second game we will touch on is Breaking Harmony Square which is a park where you become the editor in chief for. This game is also very similar to the first with the question layout. You are also looking to gain as many likes as you can get for each post you post.

There are 4 chapters or "levels" in this game that you go through. You get a peak such as this at the end of each one relating to what you just answered questions about.

The different chapters touch on Trolling, Emotion, Amplification, and Escalation.

At the very end, you are asked to judge article headlines and decide whether or not they are misleading or not misleading.

It's definitely interesting reading the headlines because if you do not pay close attention you could believe that they are actually true and not misleading.

At the very end, it shows you how many likes you ended with and where you stand in regard to everyone else that played. The real question is does it show that same thing for everyone that played or does it accurately mean you did better than that percentage? We may never know.

In the article, Why Do Our Brains Believe Lies, states " By default, people will believe anything they see or hear." This is a scary statement especially in today's world because we are constantly absorbing information through social media, the news, etc. "We are also more susceptible to misinformation that fits into our worldviews or social identities, and we can fall into confirmation bias, which is the tendency to look for and favor information fitting what we already believe." "Multiple studies have found that misinformation can still influence our thinking even if we receive a correction and believe it to be true, a phenomenon known as the “continued influence effect.” So whether we realize something ends up not being true it's extremely hard for our brains to essentially comprehend and believe that it was wrong in the first place and that we are constantly being influenced by everything.

This is why it is very important to continue to be educated on misinformation and utilize tools like the games we discussed. People need to be aware of what they are reading since even though they know its false they still believe it to be true.