Fakey: A Game Intervention to Improve News Literacy on Social Media

Abstract

We designed and developed Fakey, a game to improve news literacy and reduce misinformation spread by emulating a social media feed. We analyzed player interactions with articles in the feed collected over 19 months within a real-world deployment of the game. We found that Fakey is effective in priming players to be suspicious of articles from questionable sources. Players who interact with more articles in the game enhance their skills in spotting mainstream content, thus confirming the utility of Fakey for improving news literacy. Semi-structured interviews with those who played the game revealed that players find it simple, fun, and educational. The principles and mechanisms used by Fakey can inform the design of social media functionality to help people distinguish between credible and questionable content in their news feeds.