Online game could deter people from being radicalised into terrorism

Online games originally designed to stop people falling for conspiracy theories could also help prevent people from becoming radicalised into terrorism in war-torn countries.

When people in Iraq were asked to play such a game, it improved their ability to spot manipulative messaging from fake terrorist recruiters. “It was very positive to see that this helped in a non-Western context under challenging real-world conditions,” says Sander van der Linden at the University of Cambridge, who presented the work at New Scientist Live on 8 October.

Techniques like these were originally devised to “inoculate” people against conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the World Trade Center buildings in New York collapsed on 9/11 due to previously planted explosives.

Source: New Scientist