Playing With Your Emotions

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, online misinformation has proliferated, requiring innovative interventions to improve information literacy for the public. In this paper we report on an evaluation of an interactive narrative education intervention developed as part of a design-based research project into microlearning and COVID-19 misinformation. The intervention aimed to enable learners to (1) name the role that fear and anger play in the spread of misinformation, and (2) identify a strategy for interrupting the spread of misinformation driven by fear or anger. Using a pre- and post-test design, we surveyed 195 Canadian women to evaluate whether the intervention was effective at achieving its learning outcomes. Results indicate that the intervention was effective in improving understanding about emotionally-driven misinformation, the role of emotions in the circulation of misinformation, and self-efficacy with respect to this type of misinformation. Based on these results, we suggest that short interactive narratives may be useful in education efforts aimed to address online misinformation and that this technique may have wide appeal to educators seeking accessible web tools for teaching this type of content.