Review of the game “The Dangerous Game”.
A thousand word essay written as part of the application for the Youth Media Initiative 2018 Cohort organized by the Centre for young Nigerians with interest in journalism and public policy.
Submitted by;
Anozie Nnaemeka Kingsley
(
[email protected]),
University of Benin,
Benin City,
Nigeria.
To;
Centre for Media and Peace Initiative (CMPI),
4 West 43rd street,
6th floor, New York,
NY 10036, United States.
April, 2018
Information are facts or details that tell one something about a situation, event and person. Plant water is a metaphor for human information. What we take in as information expresses phenotypically as our attitude, character and perception about situations as they affect our social, cultural, economic, religious and political beliefs. Information in recent times has been invariably cheap owing to the efficient and low cost system of disseminating information. News or event that happened in china in the last few seconds to one minute could be well distributed as far as Angola or Switzerland within the next minute. This is as a result of the distribution of internet and media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
However, false information which practically competes with the truth; the ultimate description or meaning of information, has taken advantage of the low cost of spreading information to reduce poorly the benefits of derived information – guidance, knowledge, wisdom etc.
Many individuals and organizations indulge in this act of disinformation for their different benefit which may be economical, political, security and so on. Others especially individual entities also misinform to derive fun. Information, positive or negative, true or false have the capacity to influence or change a vast majority of the human population since it guides human thought and action. The speed of information circulation has created a debacle on the positivity or negativity of its distribution. Disinformation could turn upside down and set the world in a state of a war within a time space of minutes to hours. Misinformation or disinformation is the opposite or twist of ultimate truth which pester human knowledge. Globally, its (misinformation) impact has caused several great losses and it continues till date.
The game, “the most dangerous game” unravels some strategies and tactics that media operators employ in misinforming her audience towards gaining their loyalty
The set of strategies used in the game include;
Impersonation
Emotion
Conspiracy
Discredit and
Trolling
These strategies constitute the major sources of misinformation and avalanche of bad news in the society today. The game tries to explain the underlying factors to understanding the power of information dissemination and the basics of gaining followers or audience, also the mastery of sustaining and retaining them (followers). In a global world/society, where information values so much that it can make or mar nations, understanding the tactics used by different organizations and media centers would equip potential media professionals, experts and the population at large with the connection and capacity to analyzing and sieving out false information aimed at distracting, disorganizing and or wasting the precious time of the targeted population. From the game, it is shown that disinformation when skillfully carried out could oust innocent, frustrated persons and even discredit organizations with right information and course. For better explication and of the derived understanding from the game, the strategies aforementioned above used to misinform the media audience is explained as they are used in the game. They are:
Impersonation:
Here individuals and organizations who are new to information channels indulge in impersonating important persons and entity to build their audience. This they do because people tend to question and doubt individual media accounts that re yet to be verified. They usually skip information from such media channels rather than react to them. As observed from the game, to gain more followers, new media channels usually impersonate by borrowing another’s credibility (an influential account. E g. Using president trunp as president trump) or faking a twitter account. When they do this, they resort to making controversial statement and remarks to excite public reaction thereby gaining the required audience/followers. Once they have reached enough followers, they go back to their intended or original brand, building such channels as blog.
The other strategies employed to misinform the public are those meant to sustain the already built audience from impersonation. In doing this, disinformation is published for public reaction. They involve the exploitation of people’s emotion, libeling against other people or attacking organization in order to consolidate previous claims or positions which are often controversial or false.
Conspiracy, discredit and trolling as learnt from the game are all tools of disinformation. Taking advantage of people’s fear, blowing an existing story way out of proportion, sowing doubt and creating questions using doctored images as evidence all involve in building audience and gaining public loyalty
While the game presents a blueprint of disinformation and its associated principles, tools and techniques, gives an understanding of the degree to which individuals and organization go to misinform people, the game did not question the moral and ethical background of such practices. It (the game) exposes to the player and every partaker, the possible reasons and sources of misinformation thereby leaving the player to be conscious of information they take in as disseminated by individuals and organizations. The moral question of the game would then be justified since the game could be seen as an education and awareness process rather than a training platform for disinformation.
Having taken time to understand the game, I summarized the important points to include
Content is critical to building audience. Whether one is considering impersonation, running a fake account, he needs content for these and therefore must identify important phenomena that would excite the public interest. Appealing to peoples’ emotion is a very good way of doing this because by playing on their emotion, you climb the ladder of credibility.
Unlike emotion, when one proposes a theory too distant or disconnected from reality, people do not find them interesting and may question their credibility.
You lure people in bit by bit. When trying to attack or be controversial, start out with something more or less realistic. When you lose followers as a result of fact finding agencies who expose you, it is better to attack them than doing nothing. Exploiting emotional tactics would help you do this.
Use people’s desire for the truth to lure them into your band of followers.
When you have successfully built a strong credibility, look out for innovative, less dangerous strategies to public information.
