Misinformation – often spread by automated bots, but also unsuspecting people – worms its way into our heads by appealing to a sense of injustice or distrust and by using emotionally charged language to stoke fear and anger among social media users.
And sadly, as we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, it can have very real and sometimes lethal consequences.
But just like a vaccine stimulates an immune response to protect against disease, this new game – called GoViral! – aims to give people a taste of the tactics used to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, so they can combat falsehoods online.
“COVID-19 falsehoods and conspiracies pose a real threat to vaccination programs in almost every nation,” says social psychologist and co-author Jon Roozenbeek.
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Source: This Clever Game ‘Microdoses’ People With The Manipulation Used to Spread Fake Facts