Bad News in the civics classroom: How serious gameplay fosters teenagers’ ability to discern misinformation techniques

Bad News in the civics classroom: How serious gameplay fosters teenagers’ ability to discern misinformation techniques

Bad News in the civics classroom: How serious gameplay fosters teenagers’ ability to discern misinformation techniques

Carl-Anton Werner Axelsson, Thomas Nygren, Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden

Abstract

"Although the serious game Bad News has been used to inoculate citizens against misinformation, it has not been formally evaluated in traditional class- rooms. We therefore evaluated its impact on 516 upper-secondary Swedish stu-dents playing individually, paired, or with the whole class. Results show that students improved their ability to discern manipulation techniques in social media posts. Students with prior positive attitudes to credible news sources were better discerners, and this attitude became significantly more positive post-intervention. Rationales for identifying manipulative techniques increased among those who improved their credibility ratings pre-to post-intervention. Lastly, enjoyment of and interest in the intervention was higher in the whole-class setting. This study offers insights for educators on using serious games in formal teaching to foster media and information literacy."

Reference

Axelsson, C.-A. W., Nygren, T., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2024). Bad News in the civics classroom: How serious gameplay fosters teenagers’ ability to discern misinformation techniques. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15391523.2024.2338451

Keywords

Serious games, Inoculation theory, Bad News Game