List and Data on State of Fake News Games 2020

I have recently embarked on a research project that seeks to document digital literacy games. As one part of that larger experiment, I decided to pull from the sample all of the games which discussed fake news. I have written an initial report for a class and I plan on fixing and eventually publishing it. Until then I wanted to make the data for the project publicly accessible. At the bottom of this post you will find a link to my data spreadsheet, feel free to engage with it as you see fit.

For those of you who might be interested in playing the games, all of the links can be found in the spreadsheet, but I thought I would highlight the three I enjoyed the most (in no particular order).

1. Harmony Square

This text-adventure lets you sew chaos within a quaint little town. Walking you through the process of fake news creation and distribution, you feel maniacal as the town quickly turns on one another. Through cute stories about pineapples and statues, this game is a fast, fun and pretty well-written experience.

2. Fake it to Make It

If you like games that put you in control and let you build an empire, this game by Amanda Warner might be the one for you. You get to build your own fake news empire, determining which stories to send to which groups of people. A content management game, it highlights how money is made through fake news creation and distribution.

3. BBC Ireporter

While a little more kid focused than the other two, I actually enjoyed playing the game. It tells a somewhat compelling story and highlights the challenges that journalists have when it comes to misinformation and fake news. I appreciate how it balances your decisions to get the story right with your character’s stats. A bit of a longer game as well, it nicely shows how misinformation, bias, or manipulation of news stories can occur (albeit somewhat exaggerated for teaching purposes)

DATA SET:

I wanted to briefly highlights parts of the data for those who might use it. There are some columns that I ended up not finishing. The main reason for this was time, as I had to complete this iteration of the project in about 3 weeks. I plan to go back and fill these sections out in the future.

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1us-I5oG3GvqG0v1gjOPwLGK7SN6Vtcb5iccyhLPM-Ko/edit?usp=sharing