Media literacy experiment · 2026
A vaccine delivered through the feed.
You will run an account that wants followers — and you will walk the forger’s route yourself first.
A learning tool. Do not reuse the tactics shown inside.
Read me first
This is a media-literacy experiment. Its only purpose is to let you see how false stories travel. Every case, screenshot, account and comment described here is invented. Do not imitate or forward the persuasion techniques shown.
Game rules
Three routes, three outcomes. Guess which one grows an account fastest.
The closer a post stays to the truth, the fewer people forward it. That is not a coincidence — it is how emotion travels.
Your account
Your feed is blank.
What you post next decides what it becomes.
Every fake-news account out there starts exactly like this. The first post sets the shape.
Half-time
These three cards map onto the screenshots you see every week.
Cheat sheet
Red: you used it in this run. Green: you did not take that route.
1 Source — official, or authoritative?
2 Completeness — or a fragment?
3 Evidence — a document, or a guess?
4 Restraint — if unsure, do not forward.
Certificate
You can now name 5 common rumour techniques, 0 of which you actually used during the run.
Recognising them afterwards matters more than avoiding them at the time.
Saves as one tall image, ready for a post or a story