Blog Entry #2: Evaluating Misinformation Education Tools

For this blog post, I'll be evaluating two out of the four misinformation education tools given in class this week. 

The tools given include:

News Literacy Project's RumorGuard

Bad News

Breaking Harmony Square

Fake it to Make it

The tools I'll be evaluating are RumorGuard and Breaking Harmony Square. 

RumorGuard:

RumorGuard is a very straightforward and explanatory site on different "rumors" or misinformation circulating the media. Due to the simplicity, it's very easy to understand and effective as a result. Below I've screenshotted an examples from a recent fake post for April Fool's day--fun fact, the BBC released a "documentary" on spaghetti growing on trees in Switzerland 68 years ago as an April Fool's day prank.

I found RumorGuard's additional page on "The Factors" to be very helpful, as it allows users to evaluate information on their own that may not be under "Recent Checks." RumorGuard does a good job at explaining how and why each of their factors is being used to evaluate information. I believe it's an effective tool that everyone could benefit from exploring, as anyone can navigate and understand the information it contains. 

Breaking Harmony Square:

Of the three games that were available, Bad News, Breaking Harmony Square, and Fake it to Make it, Breaking Harmony Square had the best user experience (UX). UX is important when educating people on misinformation, because it encourages them to actually engage with the material. Having a good user interface (UI) that's clear and direct about the information in the game also benefits the player. Breaking Harmony Square was the clearest about how to gain points and identify misinformation; it had the most intuitive UI. 

In order to gain points, there are four chapters that the player must go through. The first chapter involves trolling. The second is creating a fake website to ruin someone's election campaign. The third chapter is attempting to corrupt a news anchor, using bots, and tearing down the news anchor for identifying the fake website. The final chapter involves using all the skills to create misinformation to identify misinformation. While there is no way to win the game, it is fun and figuring out how to gain likes and followers encourages the user to continue playing. 

The goal is to bring up emotions, manipulate emotions, amplify emotions and escalate situations in order to spread misinformation and chaos. By being on the side of creating misinformation, it helps the user learn how to identify misinformation, as they've learned all the tricks to it. I think the UX, UI, and motivation of gaining likes and followers was effective in getting the user to play the game and understand how misinformation is created. 

Overall thoughts on educational games and interactive tools for eradicating misinformation:

I think educational games and interactive tools are pretty useful, as it doesn't make people feel like they're doing an assignment. By using games, people are able to breakdown ideas in palatable ways, gain dopamine through success (so they feel like they're having fun), and the colors and graphics are pleasing to the eye. The learner gets to actively participate in order to progress the lesson, so they want to be part of the lesson and actually learn. Cool Math Games was and is popular and effective for a reason.