Most of the tools designed to combat disinformation are built with a Western audience in mind. But what happens when you get the same tools elsewhere?
My colleagues and I wanted to find out. We tested whether media literacy games work equally well across cultures by comparing two versions: one made for Western audiences and one made for Indonesian players. We found out whether these games work not only from the content, but also from the culture, design choices and how people actually relate to them.
Our research was recently published in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. and the full paper is available through open access. I also recently submitted an article about this Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. I am happy to share a summary of our findings here.
Prebunking and Debunking
First, I would like to share what I mean by pre-op strategies in these games. You’ve probably heard of bullying, which corrects false claims after people see them. This can be useful, but teaching people to make false claims before they are exposed shows more promise. Prebunking is the root of it William McGuire’s vaccination theory from the 1960s: expose people to a weakened version of the misleading facts so that they can develop cognitive resistance before meet the real thing.
It’s a promising idea, and research shows it can be very effective. However, most of the preclinical studies have been conducted on Western and English-speaking populations. Given how disinformation has become in the world, this is a blind spot. So we decided to try two very different games in two very different countries.
Two games, two cultural logics
Gali Facta specially designed for Indonesia. It simulates a WhatsApp group chat where players receive messages from fictional friends and family and must decide if the content is trustworthy or not. You can play it Here. Its tone is pro-social and public, reflecting how Indonesians actually encounter misinformation: through peer networks and instant messaging apps, not Twitter matches. We found earlier that when Indonesian participants played our game, they were able to detect false information better.
Harmony Square made by and for a Western audience. Players become the “Chief Disinformation Officer” in a fictional city and spread actively disinformation (trolling, scaremongering, polarizing) in order to understand these tactics. You can play it Here. It’s funny and satirical, rooted in the kind of partisan, Democratic-oriented media environment familiar to American news consumers. has has been shown to effectively teach Americans how to determine the technique of manipulation.
On paper, each game seemed suited to its home context. But what happens when you cross the wires?
What we found
We surveyed nearly 1,600 participants in two studies—799 in Indonesia and 790 in the United States—randomly assigned each to play Gali Fakta, Square Harmony, or Tetris (our control condition). So, in the first study, our Indonesian participants were randomly assigned to the original Gali Facta and the Indonesian adapted Harmony field. In the second study, American participants were randomly assigned to the original Harmony site, and Americans adapted Gali Facta. They then rated the true and false headlines and indicated whether they shared them. We measured two outcomes: comprehension accuracy (could they distinguish truth from falsehood?) and comprehension sharing (were they less likely to share false headlines?).
In Indonesiaculturally adapted play was of great importance. Gali Fakta improved the understanding of sharing: people who played it were less likely to share false headlines. The field of Harmony had no effect at all. And Indonesian participants rated Gali Fakta as much more attractive than Harmony Square.
The western comedy game just didn’t hit the ground running. This makes sense: In Indonesia, spreading false information is not only culturally offensive, it can have legal consequences. A game that asks you to play as an agent of disinformation. Additionally, in the US, conservative participants were consistently less accurate at identifying false headlines, but this pattern did not emerge in Indonesia, where political ideology did not predict comprehension at all. This means that Indonesia’s polarization tends to run along ethnic and religious lines rather than left-right political differences.
In the United Statesboth games worked well. Harmony Field improved accuracy and understanding sharing, replicating previous findings. But here’s what surprised me: Gali Fakta, our Indonesian WhatsApp game translated into English as well significantly improved both outcomes. None of the games were rated as more interesting than the other.
We thought Harmony Square’s satire and political framing would resonate with American audiences, but we weren’t sure about Gali Facta’s WhatsApp design. We found that Gali Facta’s simpler, more socially familiar format seemed to travel very well.
The attraction effect
One of the findings I find most interesting: the predictive effectiveness of engagement. In Indonesia, greater engagement with Gali Fakta predicted better understanding. In the US, higher engagement predicted better outcomes both games
This suggests that the mechanism behind foreplay involves active engagement rather than passive influence. If the game doesn’t engage you, it probably won’t change the way you evaluate information. Cultural fit appears to drive engagement and engagement drives learning.
What does this mean?
These results contradict the assumption that effective digital interventions can be easily translated and scaled up globally. The satirical, political format that works in the US has not been transferred to Indonesia. But Gali Facta’s simpler chat format worked on a peer-to-peer basis both countries
Our findings suggest that what travels across cultures is not sophisticated political satire, but familiar communication formats, simplicity, and social values. In other words, a chat interface, support for your community and recognizable social shares.
A few important caveats: we used different headlines in each country, making direct comparisons difficult. We only measured the effects after playing, so we don’t know how long the benefits will last. And pre-election games tend to attract people who are already thinking about misinformation, which raises the broader question of how to reach out to those who aren’t.
As I regularly discuss here delusionmisinformation is a deep social problem, and it spreads through relationships and networks of trust, not just algorithms. These findings suggest that the most effective interventions may be those that meet people within these social dynamics, rather than asking them outside of them.
A version of this post will also appear there Error: Bulletin.
