Playful Knowledge Transfer as a Response to Crises

How can interactive practices of audiovisual knowledge transfer react to crises such as war and disinformation? How can we intervene in the chaos? What possibilities are there to increase mental resistance to manipulation? This contribution hypothesizes that playful knowledge transfer in interactive documentaries can respond to crises by making complex interrelationships experienceable and enabling users to try out actions in media environments that prepare them for challenges in real life. “You will soon join training on disinformation. You won’t be forced to do anything against your beliefs, so choose your character and decide which side you want to fight for. Trolls or Elves?” These are the opening words of the gamified interactive web-documentary Trolls vs Elves (UK 2023, Aleksandra Rydzkowska), which deals with the activities of disinformation-spreading internet trolls on the one hand and cyber activists called ‘cyber elves’ on the other. Game elements are used to explain real issues such as the disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine. This contribution analyzes Trolls vs Elves drawing on research on gamification in documentary and journalism (Ferrer-Conill 2016). Gamification is understood as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al. 2011, 2). Rather than presenting prefabricated knowledge, users experience it interactively. Methodologically, the study examines the strategies for making mechanisms experienceable in the web-documentary by analyzing the interaction possibilities on two levels (cf. Kermanchi 2019). The first level relates to the replication of processes in the larger structure. The navigation concept and its representation via the interface play a central role at this level. The second level focuses on the transformation of social action into intramedial action. Drawing on Bruno Latour, social action is not limited to human actors (Latour 2005, 71). For this examination of the individual interaction possibilities, the form, context, and purpose need to be examined (cf. Nash 2012, 200–201). In Trolls vs Elves, gamification serves both to impart knowledge and to intervene, as this contribution aims to show. By being ‘trained’ either as trolls or as cyber activists in the web-documentary, the players experience the mechanisms underlying the spread of disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine. They learn how to debunk and counter disinformation techniques, and how to combat online propaganda. To progress in the online experience, users must decide, for example, which social media posts embedded in the project are spreading false information about Ukraine. By ensuring that all content in the web-documentary refers to reality and by revealing false information, the project counteracts existing disinformation narratives. Using documentary film material, network analyses, and data visualizations, Trolls vs Elves not only represents reality but also intervenes in it, as the contribution argues. The reference to reality, furthermore, becomes apparent when the project ultimately asks players not to follow the trolls’ advice learned during the web-documentary and not to spread disinformation in real life. By enabling intramedial action that is transferable to real life, gamification therefore has potential as well as limitations and dangers, which this contribution examines.