Fake-news Game
Monday, 10.02.2025, 9:00-13:00, CDE, room 216 ILIAS
In this game, students will produce a fake-news article, coming from a specific point of few and to a specific topic.
why? Because by producing fake-news themselves, students “inoculate” themselves against mis- and disinformation (Lu et al. 2023).
how? In groups of 2-3, students will all start with the same information (see Information - Issue), but will have different roles or characters (see Roles). They use this role to craft one online-article per group, using the information provided, but with the intentions/motivations of their specific role.
The game is a variation of the fake news game presented in Roozenbeek and Van Der Linden (2019).
1 Instuction
Read the description of your assigned role and the information about the issue.
Agree in the group about your character: formulate their interest for the issue, their motivations, why they think how they think.
Start outlining the article (see Structure of the article).
When you are happy with the outlining, invest the rest of the time in polishing first your title, then your header and then the interpretation of the numbers part.
1.1 Structure of the article
Your article should contain:
Title
Header
Numbers & facts and interpretation, i.e. what the numbers mean
Causes of the issue/problem
Consequences of the issue/problem
A fake “expert-opinion” that you invent
Conclusion
2 Roles
2.1 Denier
You strive to make the the topic look small and insignificant. Maybe you have specific, even evil reasons for this (do you have any interests in keeping the status quo and not addressing the issue?), or maybe you just think that other issues are much more important than this one.
2.2 Alarmist
You want to make the issue as large and problematic as possible. Maybe this is out of genuine care for people, or for other vested interests. Your goal is to make people jump up and rush to action about this topic.
2.3 Clickbait monger
Your goal is to get as many clicks (and therefor as much money from ads) as possible. You really don’t care about the content or the consequence of your article for people’s lives. If people are stupid enough to click on your article and read it, it’s their own fault.
2.4 Conspiracy Theorist
You distrust any kind of official mainstream narrative and you want to convince your audience that this distrust is justified. You are the smart one here, connecting all the dots, and you dare to look at what the others don’t see. But once they read your article, they will be able to see the truth for themselves.
3 Information - Issue
Anemia is a condition where someone has fewer red blood cells or lower hemoglobin levels in their blood cells than normal. This reduces the blood’s ability to provide oxygen throughout the body.
Its symptoms are often subtle: in most cases, it’s fatigue and weakness, but it can also involve shortness of breath and headaches. These symptoms are common for various reasons, making them harder to attribute to a specific condition like anemia in adults as well as children. Even in children, when anemia can lead to delays in cognitive and physical development and poor concentration, the signs are not obvious.
Severe anemia can lead to much more drastic outcomes, though. Anemia during pregnancy can significantly increase the risks of low birthweight babies and, therefore, the risk of infant mortality. It also increases the risk of maternal mortality, especially if there is a lot of blood loss during childbirth. And anemia in pregnant women is extremely common, especially in lower-income countries.
The reasons for anemia are varied:
low iron intake from food / malnutrition
infectious diseases like HIV, Malaria
infections by parasites such as Hookworms
menstruation health issues, e.g. Endometriosis
pregnancy
maternal blood-loss at birth
genetic causes such as sickle cell disease
(This information is adapted from an excerpt of Ritchie 2024. You could go there for more information, but really the goal is to make your own article, not copy hers.)