Interactive Games: Learning Media Literacy Through Play

Interactive games give students a fun way to practice media literacy skills. Students can play short games that ask them to identify fake news, check whether a source is reliable, spot bias, and decide if information can be trusted. These activities allow students to practice making decisions and applying media literacy skills in a more engaging way.

RESOURCE 4: GAME

Bad News is an interactive game that puts students in the role of someone creating and spreading fake news online. The game uses a social media style setting where students make choices that help them gain followers and build credibility, while seeing how misinformation can be used to influence others. As they play, students are introduced to different tactics used to spread misinformation, including impersonation, polarization, and conspiracy theories. This game helps students recognize how easily misleading information can gain attention online and encourages them to think more carefully about the information and content they come across on social media.

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PRACTICE

This game supports culturally responsive teaching by placing students in a social media setting that is familiar, allowing their everyday online experiences to become part of the learning. It also connects to the criterion of academic success by using an engaging activity to build students’ critical thinking skills while still focusing on their learning needs (Ladson‐Billings, 1995). The game’s language option also allows students to participate in a language they are comfortable with, making the activity more accessible to different learners.

CROSS-CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS

Math: Strand D.1 - Students can track and graph their follower counts across rounds, then discuss what the data shows about how misinformation spreads.
Drama: Strand B. 2 - Students can role-play a creator, a follower, and a fact-checker to explore how each person's choices affect what spreads online.

MULTILITERACIES FRAMEWORK

Multimodality: The game combines text, colours, symbols, and a social media layout to show how misinformation can be designed to grab attention
Experiencing: Students draw on their own experiences with social media as they make choices in the game.
Analyzing: Students examine the tactics used to spread misinformation and think about why each one works.
Applying: Students use what they learned to spot similar tactics in the content they come across online.

CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY

This game helps students recognize tactics such as impersonation, polarization, and conspiracy theories. It gets students to slow down and think carefully about what they see on social media. It also helps them understand how misinformation can be created to grab attention, influence people, and spread quickly.

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS

A2.2 – Online Safety, Well-Being, and Etiquette: Students learn about their rights and responsibilities when interacting online and reflect on how their choices in the game can affect their digital identity and others.
A2.4 – Forms, Conventions, and Techniques: Students explore how digital and media texts use techniques such as impersonation and polarization to influence an audience.