Even as a joke, I couldn’t bring myself to make today’s headline read like clickbait, despite media manipulation being a core theme for our discussion below.
This reluctance to play into toxic media habits made me a difficult player of Cat Park, an online game developed to improve media literacy in 15 minutes—and one that I highly recommend to parents and educators, to pass on to their children and/or students. This game offers an excellent conversation-starter around topics related to mis- and disinformation, and how to look out for signs of both online.
And yes, despite my reluctance to make “bad” choices in-game, Cat Play anticipates difficult players like me—people who don’t enjoy spreading harmful messaging—by reassuring you that your in-game choices aren’t going to do any greater harm.
Here, it’s all about exploring the consequences of bad choices in a safe sandbox, to avoid making similar bad choices in the real world, where the stakes are much higher.
In this game, you’ve just moved to a new city. You have no local friends, so your eagerness to build community is quickly used against you. You’re encouraged to meet new people by taking part in an action group to “save” the neighbourhood from a cat park, which locals keep telling you is a horrible addition to the area.
To placate their anger and judgmental tones, your character accumulates a series of media tools and skills to help these frustrated locals get their message out. You learn to pick the most incendiary headline words you can for local articles, to outrage others. You learn to follow social media commentary and enjoy the thrill of getting the biggest possible rise out of other human beings. You learn how to manipulate photos and create memes to deepen people’s belief in a growing conspiracy theory.
You bring things to a breaking point: a violent attack that leaves the cat park in ruins.
Then a clear homage to Carmen Sandiego shows up with a hot mug of coffee and a whole lot of empathy for how you ended up doing the dirty work of a rich property magnate who just wanted the park’s land for his own development projects.
Step-by-step, this “Carmen” figure teaches you how to use the same tools to alleviate some of the harm you’ve caused—but also one more, the most powerful of all:
You have to own up to what you did, and outline how you were duped into thinking you were serving a better end. You have to take responsibility for your actions, if you’re going to foster an environment of greater honesty and healing going forward.
There is no magic “app” for this final stage of restorative justice, no button-combo you can press to wipe away all the harm to public trust and property that was done. Nevertheless, in around 15 minutes, anyone with a smartphone or desktop can easily participate in an excellent bit of inoculation science: training themselves out of some of the media illiteracy that leaves us open to manipulation every day.
And then, for folks who want to learn more, or whose kids and/or students might enjoy a repeat lesson (they often do!), there’s Inoculation Science, a simple, straightforward website sponsored by the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol, with more video resources and games to help people name and “inoculate” themselves from common manipulation techniques.
Among the concepts discussed on this website are emotional language, incoherence, false dichotomies, scapegoating, and ad-hominem attacks.
And quite honestly? Even if all of these are well-known to you, you might not be in the practice of talking about them—so do give the videos a go, to sharpen your phrasing for the next time you might need to teach others on the fly how to identify misinformation in the wild. And if you’re watching these with kids or students? Make sure that they have an opportunity to put this vocabulary into practice. Let them articulate what each concept means until their definition of the term comes easily, and they can generate or identify new examples on the spot.
Also, watch for other cognitive errors that they (or you!) might fall into when trying to correct for these ones. There’s important nuance to keep in mind, for instance, when trying to stay on the lookout for mis- and disinformation: sometimes the reverse will be weaponized, too. Sometimes caution around emotional language will lead people to deny an argument simply because the speaker is emotional—which is not a fair use of this warning sign. People are always likely to get upset, and to convey their arguments from a place of emotional distress, when an issue means a great deal to them. While it is dangerous to accept the validity of claim solely from the emotional forcefulness with which it’s made, it would similarly be inappropriate to refuse the validity of a claim whenever “emotion” is also present.
In both cases, one needs more corroborating detail to make a determination of fact.
Similarly, just because “ad hominem” refers to an attack on the individual does not mean that every critical comment about an individual is a fallacy. The fallacy emerges from the comment’s level of relevance to a core argument. For example, if you try to argue that another person’s count is wrong during a financial exchange, and point to that person’s bad taste in hats to defend your accusation, this an argument made ad hominem: a fallacy. But if you accuse the other person of financial error because they’ve said before that they’re “very bad with numbers”, you’re still addressing the person—but in a way that has greater relevance when asking for an impartial recount.
Tomorrow, for Tough Times Tuesday, I’m going to talk about a “big picture” misinformation concept explored through inoculation-science games like Cat Park, and advocate for a media ecosystem that can help us to avoid the need to rely quite so much on individual vigilance in the face of so many disinformation tricks online.
But today, to start off the week on a lighter note, let’s leave off here: with a recommendation for a nifty mini-game you can share within your circles to start a conversation around the rampant spread of misinformation; and also, a gentle reminder that, even if you already know tons about logical fallacies, we can always stand to practise talking about them more, especially when navigating all the sh—aving cream that currently passes on many forums for up-to-the-minute news.
Happy rage-baiting—or, no, wait, the opposite of that thing!
See? I can joke about causing harm online without breaking out in a rash… I think?
(BRB. I have to check a few suspicious red spots on my arms.)
Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.
ML