In seven days, we set out to understand COVID-19 rumours that were causing the most harm and build a tool to encourage viral sharing that combats health misinformation.
Cause
Health Safety
Locations
Canada, United States, India, Australia, Uganda, EU
Status
Online
Content
People are searching for answers and guidance in an effort to protect themselves and their loved ones but information shared online is often contradictory, misleading, or unsafe. Without access to good information, people pose an urgent public health risk to themselves and their communities.
Our team monitored over 120 keywords across 175,000+ public social media conversations to identify trending health and safety claims that have reached the greatest number of people. From this we identified the top 20 rumours and sourced answers from trusted health resources.
The data enabled us to develop a game that combats trending COVID-19 misinformation.
We built a simple swipe and play game based on common social app-gestures - swipe right or left to guess true or false. As the people play the game they're presented with real, fact checked, responses that debunk commonly shared COVID-19 misinformation.
Built to encourage viral sharing the game challenges users to rank up to the highest possible score and prove to friends and family that they're savvy when it comes to COVID-19.
Over the past several months our team has turned the Coronavirus Quiz into a new game, It's Contagious!, with new features, rewards, and content built for a Canadian audience.
The original Coronavirus Quiz was launched in over 30 countries worldwide.
Heritage Canada has provided Digital Public Square with funding for the expanded Canadian version of the game (It's Contagious), new research, content development, and outreach to help Canadians tackle the growing spread of misinformation online. We are also pleased to be partnering with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and Jack.org to launch customized versions of It's Contagious for vulnerable communities.
The National Science Foundation in partnership with the University of South Carolina has provided Digital Public Square with funding for research, content development, and outreach to help Americans tackle the growing spread of misinformation online with two American versions of the game (It's Infectious and Know it or Not). It's Infectious focuses on misinformation surrounding COVID-19; Know it or Not focuses on misinformation relating to vaccines more broadly.
Possible Use Cases
- Combating disinformation
- Issue area education