Tackling misinformation with games: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Misinformation and fake news are severe threats to society. The role of critical reading skills is crucial in the battle against misinformation. Despite the promising results of game-based interventions to mitigate the effects of misinformation, the corpus of research on games supporting critical reading skills needs an overview. Therefore, a systematic literature review was conducted to analyze how games have been used to tackle misinformation and reveal game design trends. A total of 15 papers eventually met the defined inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The review revealed that the use of games in critical reading education had emerged recently and focused mainly on fake news. Most games were grounded on inoculation theory and consequently designed to expose players to weakened doses of the misinformation manipulation techniques to build resistance against them. So far, the games have been studied mainly in informal settings and with adult participants. The median sample size was 196, and the median playing time was 15 min across the studies reported in the papers. Although all the reviewed papers reported positive outcomes, the game-based learning research on the critical reading domain is not yet mature enough to generalize findings.