Episode 138 Elena Rabkina on Gamified Media Literacy
Elena Rabkina on Gamified Media Literacy
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Experience Points, host Dave Eng interviews interactive artist and game designer Elena Rabkina on the power of gamification in media literacy. Elena shares her journey from intellectual gaming in Belarus to designing impactful games like Media Mayhem, which teaches players how news is created, manipulated, and consumed. She discusses how game-based education fosters critical thinking, especially in an era of misinformation and AI-generated content. Elena envisions media literacy as an essential skill and emphasizes the role of games in shaping informed, discerning citizens.
Elena Rabkina
she/her/hers
Artist, Educator and Game Designer
Artistic Research and Social Innovation Foundation
Elena Rabkina is an interactive artist, game designer, and head of the Artistic Research and Social Innovation Foundation (ARSIF). She creates interactive games at the intersection of social illustration and public art, using collective storytelling and gamification to foster immersive, inclusive experiences. She has developed four games: - "I Am Okay" – on mental health and burnout - "Nazouniki" – on the Belarusian language - "Media Mayhem" – on media literacy - "Dvoryk" – on urban development and human rights Her games are played in 20+ countries, including the Netherlands, Georgia, the UK, the USA, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, and Germany.
(Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/rrrabkina/
(Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/whoisrabkina/
(Website): https://rabkina.org/
(Other): https://gamesforbelarus.com/
(Other): https://gamesforbelarus.com/mediamayhem
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com.
On today's episode, we'll learn from Elena Rabkina. Elena is an interactive artist, game designer and head of the Artistic Research and Social Innovation Foundation, ARSIF. She creates games blending social illustration, public art, and collective storytelling to spark meaningful conversations. Her work tackles mental health, media literacy, language and urban development, reaching players in over 20 countries.
Elena Rabkina:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Dave Eng:
Great. I'm glad to have you here, and the first thing I want to talk about is the topic that brought me to you, Elena. So I wanted to talk more about your journey into gamification in media literacy, so specifically, I'm asking can you share your journey into game design and how it led you to focus on gamified learning, particularly in media literacy?
Elena Rabkina:
So I have always been interested in games and I have played games since I was a child. I was born in Belarus, and there, we have intellectual games and it's a type of a team sport. So I was playing it since I was 10. At some point, I won a world cup in it and became a coach. So I played it till I actually finished my university, so it was a long career of playing and then coaching, and then I became more interested into the LARPs, which is live action role plays. And Belarus, it had developed in the direction of black box and more theatrical experiences, so I started to create these games on different topics like community or social environment, or how people with eyesight disability and without eyesight disability can play together and can push the idea of inclusion even further.
And I was nominated for RADA Awards for this last project, and then I also was more and more interested in the games shaping the society, and I got educated in how to create board games. But I wasn't creating board games till the moment that I left Belarus because of political tensions and persecutions in 2020. Then living at that moment in Ukraine, I was really willing to do something for my country, but I could not be physically there. So I created my first board game about burnout, and I produced it inside Belarus and I spread it all across Belarus in such governmental facilities I would not even expect, but people were reaching out and the feedback was really, really great.
So since then, I produced four games and one of them was the game, Media Mayhem, which is about media literacy. And why media literacy? To be honest, the answer is so obvious because I think it is the topic to talk about, but if talking about media literacy was enough, it wouldn't be a problem. So game design allows us to have this first hand experience, and then this is generally the whole power of game, us instead of being told what to do, it is about us experiencing. I am actually a big advocate of game-based education. I gave a TEDx talk about games, how games are a part of evolutionary process and how all animals play and this is how they learn, so humans also learn much more effectively through game-based education and games because it's about experiencing instead of just being told some knowledge.
Dave Eng:
I see. Thanks for sharing. I really want to know more about your past and those games that you played growing up. Can you share more about some of those games you played when you were a child?
Elena Rabkina:
Okay. Well, so I really played these intellectual games and it's like 60 seconds and you have a question, you have to find an answer, and it's a team sport which has six people in a team and it's a lot of problem-solving. There are also other disciplines like brain ring, when it's about being fast. So I did tons of these intellectual games and sub games to train for the tournaments, so intellectually, I was engaged in mostly that. And talking about other types of sport, maybe sport games, I play squash. I really love it because I like that it's a bit unpredictable and then also very dynamic, and I also play billiards, I think because I just enjoy the beauty of it.
Dave Eng:
I see. All right, thanks for sharing. I appreciate it. I want to go into our second question, and you touched on this a little bit before about the power of games in media literacy and why using games in general is such a powerful medium. So I want to know, why do you think games are such a powerful tool for teaching media literacy? And then specifically, if you can talk about the Media Mayhem game that you created, how does that game approach this challenge?
Elena Rabkina:
So I really love games because it is a very easy entrance to the topic, and it's also an entrance or introduction to the topic that creates an even ground. So all the players, all the participants, they have a collective experience, right? Games can have different dynamics. They can be more collaborative, more competitive, but in the end, it doesn't matter. There is this magic circle, as we call it in game design, and you enter this magic circle, so you enter the world with its specific rules, specific dynamics, and then you learn and you interact and you gain some experience. You have some positive or negative reinforcements from your actions, and then this world stops existing but the knowledge or the insights you got from them, they remain with you.
And I find it so beautiful, so powerful, because yes, it is a horizontal approach. Yes, it is first-hand experience. So instead of just getting ready-made knowledge, you are actually experiencing. It is amazing for your brain because the thing is then when we are in a class and we get some knowledge, the thing is that we have 72 hours to use this knowledge in practice or it's gone. Our brain will consider it unnecessary and it will be gone. So because of that, games give you immediate necessity to use your knowledge, and this is how I build Media Mayhem. Media Mayhem is a game about a very bad media with very bad journalists, so it's media, it's almost about to be closed because they publish a lot of fake news, but then they're given the last chance. So everyone was fired from this media and then they are left with four journalists, the best from the worst. And they said, "Okay, guys, this is your last chance. You have one year. Please, at least publish more than 50% of news which are true."
So in a way, from one side, each of these journalists have agenda to win. At the same time, if they all mess up the media, they all lose, and that's I think a very fun, and for me, a fun way to put it because on one side, yes, they can really go for the personal gain because this or that news gives them that or that advantage. But at the same time, I love this idea that if we're really going to be pushing our individual success or individual needs and not think about the collective, we're just all going to lose.
So in this game, they have 12 months, and because everyone got fired and all the editors got fired, so they switch the role of the editor once in a while, so every four months, every journalist becomes an editor. So the editor has to choose which news are to be published, and then the other three journalists will suggest. And they will try to trick or maybe not to trick, and it's a lot about creating news and then also understanding how media works. They also touch upon click ability, they touch upon fake news. There are six main categories, which is politics, ecology, culture, health, technology, and I think that's it.
And then I build these games specifically for the school environments, but of course it can be used anywhere. But I really suggest to give these cards of topics like expertise, okay, you're an expert in the topic of ecology, to kids maybe one day ahead of time, so when they come to play the game, they actually have knowledge of what is the agenda in their country. So they have connection to the real world, but also they start to understand, oh, maybe not all the news are correct, and then there is this spectrum of fake or not fake news. Because the thing is that as people, we think the news is either true or false, but the thing is it's not true.
I have myself a background in journalism, and then I really want to explain to people that it is a spectrum. So there is news can be proved, checked, then it's solid news, but it also can be kind of trustful maybe news, maybe it's not checked but it sounds okay. So there can be deliberate fake information put in the news, but also sometimes it's just not proved. And then I teach them how to lie and how to pitch their news, and then also I teach editors how to check and to ask questions. So every time they pitch a news, they have to ask the question, the editor asks them the question, and just this practice alone of questioning news is already great, but then we put on this real spectrum idea on top of it and they have a whole table. And then they have understanding of little tricks, how people would do, how they manipulate news, how they try to trick others.
So in the end of the game, apart from this playful and competitive thing, apart from them trying to keep the media afloat and succeeding on failing together, they actually really get trained to question every news and to look for different ways that media is manipulated.
Dave Eng:
Wow. Thank you. Yeah, that's a very in-depth explanation of the game overall. I think that something that really resonated with me is that players in the game experience the role of both a writer and an editor, and I think that's incredibly important for all types of media by journalism specifically in that there are people that are going to create content and there are other people that are going to determine if that content gets published, if it gets seen, and if it's generally part of the media organization or the news organization overall, so thank you for sharing. I appreciate it.
Elena Rabkina:
It's my pleasure.
Dave Eng:
The last question I wanted to talk about was overall, the future of media literacy. And I think that this is something that a lot of people are talking about, journalists, academics, educators in general, but I want to know, with the rise of AI-generated content and specifically deep fakes, how do you see the role of gamified learning evolving in media literacy education?
Elena Rabkina:
I really hope that media literacy education is going to become as essential as maths at school, and then we are going to start teaching people about it from the very early age. Because I love internet, I love us being able to connect as a collective, but also I think children are more deceptive and there are bad things that can happen if they don't really understand media really well. And that's why I think it's just so important to create such kind of games because a game is a very easy and accessible way to learn something. And then especially if you work with young children and teenagers, because let's be honest, teenagers don't like to be told what to do, so if we are going to really pressure them, I think it might have the opposite effect.
So I hope in the future we will have obligatory media literacy education, or it can go other way around and then if we are going to walk the path of more authoritarian regimes, maybe they will really push being media illiterate. Like in the past, authoritarian regimes pushed illiteracy so people will not be able to read at all, so maybe we are going to have another option of just raising media illiterate generations that are easy to manipulate. But I think it's also up to us to decide which route we're going to go. I think even maybe if schools will not have centralized media literacy education, maybe families have to take on this role and teach their children.
Dave Eng:
So thank you, Elena. I appreciate it.
Elena Rabkina:
Well, thank you so much as well for contributing and speaking on this topic.
Dave Eng:
You got it. So we're going to go into our outro. Again, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work in general?
Elena Rabkina:
I think my website is www.rabkina.org. The website of my foundation is www.arsif.com, and I think the most active platform I use is Instagram. So you go to WhoIsRabkina, and then you've found everything about me.
Dave Eng:
Excellent. I'll make sure that all of those links are included in the show notes. Thank you, Elena. I appreciate it.
I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining us.
Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you like this episode, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing. Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. I live to lift others with learning, so if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit.
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Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2025, May 18). Elena Rabkina on Gamified Media Literacy. (No. 138) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/138
Internal Ref: UXP8Y1RJ5YG7
References
Eng, D. (2019, October 08). Game Dynamics. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2019/10/8/game-dynamics
Eng, D. (2020, March 26). What is Games-Based Learning? Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/3/26/what-is-games-based-learning
Eng, D. (2020, April 30). What is Gamification? Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/4/30/what-is-gamification
Eng, D. (2020, July 9). What is the Magic Circle? Retrieved February 27, 2025, from http://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/7/9/what-is-the-magic-circle
Eng, D. (2020, October 1). What makes a good rule book? Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/10/1/what-makes-a-good-rule-book
Eng, D. (2024, November 19). Types of Games. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2024/11/19/types-of-games