Come and fabricate fake news

Dutch researchers and media specialists as well as the University Cambridge cooperated at the beginning of the year by producing the „Bad News“ game which allows you to fabricate and distribute fake news. The simplicity and fun of the game also allows the dissemination of a „vaccine“ against fake news.

In the game, you can go through the process of creating and disseminating fake news, helping to allow your fake news on to social media as well as involving automated robots etc. During the game, you collect or lose followers while your credibility is constantly measured.

As the game progresses and your distribution of fake news „gets better“ you are rewarded with marks of recognition, which are conspiracy theories, polarization, emotion, trolling, incitement and distortion.

You can reach your „goal“ by creating misleading, emotional and biased messages and sharing and amplifying them on social media. Your activity can be supported by memes, the smearing of opponents and using experts to discredit.

The game is a practical output from a study at the University of Cambridge, in which Dutch students’ experiments showed that young people who had written their own fake news under the guidance of a teacher, recognised them much easier later than students who had learned about fake news by only reading them.

You can find out more about the study here

Propastop invites you to try the game and post screenshots of your progress on our Facebook account.

Photos: screenshots of the game