Disinformation and “fake news” are a highly relevant and pressing issue in politics and public debate. For some time now, they have also been a popular subject for board and card games, as well as for numerous browser and smartphone games on the internet. Some of these games aim to entertain by inventing absurd headlines, while others promise to sharpen media literacy by offering a selection of factual and fictitious news stories. Still others are explicitly presented as educational games: they explain the economic and psychological mechanisms behind the success of “fake news”.
These games operate in a polarized field: they address politically charged topics while claiming to educate players about objectivity and facts. What perspectives do they themselves bring to the table? Can games really add value to information literacy—perhaps even by letting players experiment with producing “fake news” in a playful way? Do the games also reveal something about the causes and functional logics of fakes and disinformation?
In my presentation, I would like to explore these questions using selected examples. I will combine this with initial considerations in the context of the proliferation of disinformation and false narratives: on the one hand, with regard to the connection between the spread of “fake news” and a public sphere transformed by social media; on the other hand, with regard to the question of how the games discussed deal with the problem of the “institutionalization of doubt”.