Breaking Harmony Square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation
Breaking Harmony Square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation
Breaking Harmony Square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation
By Jon Roozenbeek and Sander Van Der Linden
November 6, 2020
Summary
We present Harmony Square, a short, free-to-play online game in which players learn how political misinformation is produced and spread. We find that the game confers psychological resistance against manipulation techniques commonly used in political misinformation: players from around the world find social media content making use of these techniques significantly less reliable after playing, are more confident in their ability to spot such content, and less likely to report sharing it with others in their network.
The game incorporates active experiential learning through a perspective-taking exercise: players are tasked with spreading misinformation and fomenting internal divisions in the quiet, peaceful neighborhood of Harmony Square.
Overall, we find that people who play the game find misinformation significantly less reliable after playing, are significantly more confident in their assessment, and are significantly less likely to report sharing misinformation, supporting Harmony Square's effectiveness as a tool to inoculate people against online manipulation.
Getbadnews.com Similar to Bad News, playing Harmony Square builds cognitive resistance against common forms of manipulation that people may encounter online by preemptively warning and exposing people to weakened doses of these techniques in a controlled environment.
Unlike Bad News, Harmony Square is an election game that focuses specifically on how misinformation can be used to achieve political polarization, for example, by fueling outgroup hostility, a critical element of both organic misinformation and targeted disinformation campaigns, particularly during contentious political events such as the 2020 US Presidential elections.
Instead of focusing on specific examples, also known as issue-based inoculation, Harmony Square builds cognitive resistance against the techniques that underpin a whole range of political misinformation in an attempt to achieve broad-spectrum resistance against manipulation.
Does playing Harmony Square make people better at spotting manipulation techniques commonly used in political misinformation? Does playing the game increase people's confidence in their ability to spot such manipulation techniques in social media content? Does playing the game reduce people's self-reported willingness to share manipulative social media content with people in their network?
Reference
Roozenbeek, J., & Linden, S. van der. (2023, November 6). Breaking harmony square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation: HKS Misinformation Review. Misinformation Review. https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/breaking-harmony-square-a-game-that-inoculates-against-political-misinformation/