Urdu Misinformation Inoculation Game for WhatsApp Forwards

The problem: forwards that travel faster than corrections

In Pakistan, as across South Asia, WhatsApp groups are where many people get news. Family groups, school parent groups and neighbourhood groups pass on fake government notices about holidays or cash schemes, edited screenshots of news channels, old flood videos presented as today's, miracle cures during disease outbreaks and messages impersonating officials. Fact-checkers publish corrections, but corrections reach fewer people, arrive later and are often not believed.

Teaching people to spot one fake message at a time does not scale. Teaching them the techniques behind fakes, before they meet them, might.

What already exists and the gap

• Bad News, a browser game from the University of Cambridge and DROG, puts players in the role of a fake news producer learning techniques such as impersonation, emotional language and conspiracy theories.
• Harmony Square and later games apply the same approach to political misinformation.
• Fact-checking services in Pakistan and the region publish corrections of specific claims.

The gap is local relevance and evidence. Existing games are set on Twitter-style platforms and use Western examples. A later study re-examining Bad News with Indian participants found no evidence that it improved discrimination between true and fake Indian headlines. A game built around closed messaging groups, local formats such as fake notices and voice notes, and Urdu, and tested properly, fills a real gap.

Inspiration

Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation (Roozenbeek and van der Linden, Palgrave Communications, 2019) evaluated Bad News with around 15,000 participants and found that playing reduced the perceived reliability of fake posts, using an inoculation approach: exposing people to weakened forms of manipulation techniques to build resistance. The later Indian replication shows that cultural fit matters, which is exactly what this project tests.

What you build

• Players take over a forwarding account in a simulated chat app and try to grow their followers and credibility. Each chapter teaches one technique: a fake official notice with a stolen logo, an edited screenshot, an old video with a new caption, a miracle cure with fake doctor quotes, and impersonating a trusted person.
• The game shows the technique's effect on followers, then reveals the harm it causes to a character in the story, such as a family that loses money to a fake cash scheme.
• At the end, players see a summary of the techniques with short, memorable names in Urdu.
• With consent, players rate a set of real and fake example messages before and after playing.

The technically interesting part

• Writing branching content that teaches. Use a narrative scripting tool such as Ink so writers can edit the story without code. Each branch must show the technique clearly without spreading real harmful claims.
• Safe example messages. Build test items from real patterns without reproducing real false claims that could spread from the game. Have items reviewed by a fact-checker or media studies teacher.
• Running a proper study. Randomly assign participants to the game or a control activity of similar length, measure discrimination between true and fake messages (not just scepticism of everything) and pre-register your analysis plan.
• Performance on low-end phones. Keep the bundle small and test on cheap Android phones with slow connections.

How to evaluate it

• Main outcome: change in the ability to tell real from fake messages, compared with the control group, with confidence intervals.
• Side effect check: did players simply start distrusting real messages too? Report that separately.
• Engagement: completion rate and time played.
• Qualitative feedback: short interviews with a few players about which techniques they remembered.

Suggested plan

• Weeks 1 to 3: play Bad News and Harmony Square; read the inoculation papers and the Indian replication; collect patterns of local forwards with a media studies teacher.
• Weeks 4 to 8: story design in Ink, chat interface and game systems.
• Weeks 9 to 10: test items, study design and ethics approval.
• Weeks 11 to 13: pilot, fixes and the main study.
• Weeks 14 to 15: analysis, report and demo.

Path to a product

Schools, universities, NGOs working on media literacy and public health campaigns need tools that work for local audiences, and funders increasingly ask for evidence. The game could be offered free with paid customisation for campaigns, such as a version for health misinformation during outbreaks. It is a strong portfolio piece for game, product and research roles.

Scope warning

Never use or reproduce real defamatory or dangerous false claims; fictionalise. Keep it to one language and five techniques before adding more. Report your results honestly, including no effect; a well-run null result is still a strong project.

Learn what you need on Sefism

• Game development roadmap: game structure, feedback and playtesting.
• Game Programming Patterns: state machines for chapters and events.
• UI/UX design roadmap: making the chat interface feel familiar.
• Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: designing a fair comparison.
• Game development cheat sheet: playtesting and shipping on the web.

Get help with this idea

The hard parts are content that teaches without spreading harm and a study that gives a clear answer. Tauseef can help you plan the study, scope the story and present the results, whatever they turn out to be. If you are new here, create a free account first.

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