COM209 Group-based Assignment 01

This assignment is worth 40% of the final mark for COM209 Media Literacy in the Age of Fake News.

Strictly Confidential

Under no circumstances should students be allowed to see the contents of this booklet.

Question 1

The sensational and emotionally manipulative nature of unreliable news often captures the attention of audiences, making fake news spread faster and wider than the plain truth, reducing the effectiveness of attempts at pre-bunking and debunking. Games may be one potential way of bridging this gap, offering a more engaging and hands-on way of conveying information and teaching skills.

As a group, create a conceptual proposal for a game that helps players to become less susceptible to media bias. This can be a video game to be played purely digitally, or an app-assisted mixed-reality game with some physical real-life elements. Feel free to be as creative as you like (not all educational games have to be glorified quizzes!), but keep in mind that all activities within the game should ultimately contribute to the primary purpose of educating players about media bias in some way.

In your proposal, you should address the following questions, with reference to course content and your own additional research where relevant:

a) Define media bias and discuss two (2) ways it can negatively impact us and our society, with reference to appropriate real-world examples.

b) Describe three (3) components of media literacy that your game could aim to inculcate in players, and explain how each component helps to guard against media bias.

c) Outline the key design features of your game (see guiding questions/notes below), and justify your decisions based on how these features will contribute to goals discussed in part (b) and/or mitigate problems discussed in part (a).

(100 marks)