The cranky uncle game—combining humor and gamification to build student resilience against climate misinformation

Abstract

Misinformation about climate change is a consequential societal issue, causing polarization and reduced support for climate action. However, the seriousness of the problem does not preclude non-serious solutions. There are numerous potential benefits to humor as a strategy to counter misinformation, such as attracting attention and engaging disengaged audiences. This paper describes a humorous serious game—“Cranky Uncle”—developed in the U.S. to inoculate players against climate misinformation. The game combines psychological research into active inoculation, critical-thinking work on misleading rhetorical techniques, communication research into cartoon debunking, and gamification. The game’s cartoon humor and the creative potential of active inoculation lends it to classroom applications; educators have thus used classroom activities to complement the game in order to improve students’ climate literacy and critical-thinking abilities. We present several qualitative U.S.-based case studies, in formal English-speaking tertiary classrooms and informal public education settings, to illustrate the utility of a humorous, game-based approach to building resilience against climate misinformation. The approaches adopted in our case studies are offered as a model for other educators looking to use interactive games to teach critical thinking.

Keywords:

• serious game
• climate change
• misinformation
• inoculation
• humor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://youtu.be/cjuGCJJUGsg

2 https://leaderboard.crankyuncle.info/FAIRBORNOH/YELLOWSPRINGSOH/DAYTONOH/BEAVERCREEKOH/XENIAOH

3 https://crankyuncle.com/which-climate-scientists-are-in-the-97-consensus-poster/

4 https://youtu.be/HS1xWAqqhLE