Objective: With the aim of providing a solution to deal with false information and fake news in social networks, this research investigated one of the popular news games in this field called "Breaking Harmony Square" news game. The game is based on the idea that by exposing players to "small doses" of political misinformation, they can be immunized against conspiracy fantasies, thereby helping them build "antibodies" to deal with the "fake news" in the real world.
Methods: The research method used is a case study. In this research, the various dimensions of the Harmony Square news game are examined in depth; for this purpose, according to the case study research method, four steps were carried out for the in-depth understanding of a case.
Results: the five concepts of trolling, enhancing the illusion of free access, emotional language, conspiracy theory and polarization have been the focus of game developers in all stages of the game. The findings show that the five concepts of trolling, artificial enhancement of access, emotional language, conspiracy theory and polarization have been the focus of developers. People who played Square Harmony rated manipulated social media posts using the above techniques as less credible after playing the game, became more confident in their ability to identify such content, and were less willing to share such content to Share on their social networks.
Conclusions: These findings emphasize the potential of games with social impact as an effective approach to deal with misleading, fake or manipulative content in the social network space. According to the results of this research, it seems that this claim can be considered important and confirm the hypothesis that "news games will become an important part of the future of journalism or not, it is a matter of will rather than technology". According to Bogost's claims and the results of his research, the lack of attention to the development of news games in the last decade shows that despite the advancement of media technologies, there is no will necessary for the growth and development of news games. The hypothesis "news game is a necessity for portraying and discourse in the future media industry, especially news media" is also worth pondering because the Harmony Square game showed how important awareness and news literacy is for citizens to play their positive role in democratic societies and their correct decision-making are vital in political participation, and not paying attention to them will not only lead to the mushroom growth of fake news, but parallel to them, conspiracy theories are another pole of disagreement and They will cause conflict in society. Finally, the hypothesis that "news game like journalism can benefit the people and serve democracy" is confirmed by relying on the game investigated in this research. Considering the main idea of this research and the experimental and media awareness approaches with the focus on interactive media, it is clear that the whole news game is a service to democracy and even in line with theories such as Habermas's public sphere can be considered as a knowledgeable influence of interactive media on democracy.