Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg, Ph.D.'s Recent LinkedIn Posts

Media literacy has traditionally focused on helping people evaluate information. But what if we spent more time helping people understand how they evaluate information? That idea sits at the heart of a new report from the AKO Storytelling Institute at University of the Arts London and More in Common, which I had the pleasure of contributing to alongside an incredible interdisciplinary team of researchers, game designers, and practitioners. The report argues for a greater focus on psychological - not media - literacy: understanding how beliefs are shaped by cognitive biases, emotions, social influence, and group dynamics. Drawing on insights from psychology, game design, and media literacy, it highlights three psychological processes that my own research and that of many others suggests shape how people evaluate information: 🔍 How we judge the credibility of sources ❤️ How emotions influence interpretation and decision-making 👥 How social influence and perceived consensus shape belief It also explores how games can help people reflect on how they think and how they evaluate information. By engaging with psychological processes such as repetition, emotion, and social influence, games may offer a unique way to build awareness of the factors that shape belief. 📖 I've attached the report for anyone interested in the intersection of games, psychology, misinformation, and social impact.

🎮 New resource for game designers: a video toolkit on using games to address misinformation and support social change. I'm excited to share this new toolkit developed by the AKO Storytelling Institute at University of the Arts London as part of their work exploring how games can help people navigate today's complex information environment. Last year, I had the pleasure of contributing to this initiative alongside Melisa Basol, PhD, fellow researchers, and game designers - including the amazing Sindi Breshani. Together, we explored how psychological insights can inform game design -from understanding social influence and misinformation to discussing why games are often most powerful when they invite players to discover and reflect, rather than simply tell them what to think. The final toolkit brings together insights from that workshop, audience research and literature reviews conducted by More in Common, contributions from game designers, and the broader work led by the AKO Storytelling Institute team. 🧠 What I find particularly exciting about this work is the recognition that games are uniquely positioned to engage people with difficult social issues. They can create experiences that encourage reflection, perspective-taking, and critical engagement, allowing players to arrive at their own conclusions through exploration and experience rather than being didactically told what to think or believe. 📖 The toolkit accompanies a broader report produced through the project, which deserves its own post - more on that soon. 👏 Congratulations to Natasha Freedman and everyone involved in bringing this resource to life. 🔗 Video toolkit link in the comments.

This week, the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind were invited into conversations at the G7. For most of the internet era, policymakers worried about technology companies because they shaped the distribution of information. Platforms influenced what people saw, shared, and engaged with. But today, frontier AI companies are increasingly involved in the creation, interpretation, and mediation of information itself. Their systems answer questions, summarise documents, generate content, and increasingly act as intermediaries between people and knowledge. As a result, AI labs are beginning to occupy an unusual position. They are private companies, but they also influence scientific research, public discourse, education, and national competitiveness. Their decisions can have consequences that extend well beyond their customers or shareholders. This raises questions that we are currently unable to answer. Democratic societies have developed mechanisms for governing governments, media institutions, universities, and courts. What does accountability look like when a growing share of information flows through AI systems developed by a handful of private organisations? I think it’s still way too early to know where this leads. https://lnkd.in/eGRSN6uf

New term in the AI space: “Vibe Mess” 👇👌😂 “A software system created through vibe coding that appears to work, but is a hot mess when it comes to deploying safely, securely, and efficiently in the real world.” 🫠