A senior State Department official suggested Monday that video games could help the U.S. fight fake news.
“Game theory has the potential to help us develop smarter ways to build the fact-checking skills of students, and video games could contain elements that help players of all ages become more aware — and wary of — faux facts,” Bruce Wharton, acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, told the Hoover Institution during a Monday conference.
Wharton made the suggestion while discussing concerns about a “post-truth society,” a topic much discussed in the wake of Russia’s long-unacknowledged invasion of Ukraine and interference in the 2016 presidential elections. He suggested ways the U.S. government might combat false narratives, but also emphasized that some important countermeasures are beyond the scope of State Department media strategies.
“Training and education programs that both cultivate a questioning mindset and build the skills of information consumers to separate the wheat from the chaff are vital,” he said. “To be truly effective, however, we must start at a younger age. A recent study by Stanford showed that students at most grade levels cannot tell the difference between fake and real news as they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to separate truth from misinformation.”
That’s where the video games could come in, among other educational options. “Beyond these ideas, I believe we should be asking what economic mechanisms might be used to encourage skepticism and objective truths,” Wharton told his audience. “Are there known business models that reward honesty and penalize dishonesty? Perhaps some of you here may be tempted to undertake research in these areas.”
