Led by Spencer Striker, associate professor of digital media design at Northwestern University in Qatar, and Katrina Paola B. Alvarez, assistant professor of game studies at De La Salle University, Disinformation, Journalistic Freedom, & Digital Literacy in the Philippines is a collaborative, cross-platform learning game project designed for the purpose of teaching digital literacy and critical thinking to Filipino youth — enhancing their ability to make sense of disinformation, fake news, and the role of press freedom in the context of Filipino politics and society.
The aim of the project is to promote digital literacy for Filipino students through a series of immersive, role-playing games that engage students with the complex issues of willful disinformation campaigns, inviting them to recognize bias, misinformation, propaganda, and persuasion techniques used by politicians in the Philippines.
The review committee was impressed with the proposal’s strong engagement with the specific local context and history surrounding disinformation in the Philippines and welcomed the collaboration of partners, advisors, and developers with relevant local expertise. They also noted the proposal’s nuanced engagement with #IAS_NUQ themes, for example detailing how Disinformation, Journalistic Freedom, and Digital Literacy in the Philippines connects to the research theme on Media Work in the Global South by exploring issues related to journalistic and media practices; the ethics of digital media and new forms of information technology; and the impact of game-based learning on the future of both media production and media consumption in the Global South.
“Video games can be powerful tools for promoting digital literacy and engaging players with complex issues such as disinformation,” said Clovis Bergère, assistant director for research at #IAS_NUQ. “We are particularly excited about the ways in which this game project is embedded in the local context of the Philippines through sustained partnerships with local researchers as well as using Tagalog and “Taglish,” an informal blend of English and Tagalog, which will mirror in the game the local circulation of misinformation. This is a great example of creative scholarship contributing to knowledge in and on the Global South.”
The #IAS_NUQ Global South Research Grants program is a new initiative by the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South designed to support research or creative scholarship by NU-Q faculty that contribute to the production and promotion of evidence-based storytelling focused on the histories, cultures, societies, and media of the Global South.
The grants make funding available, up to US$25,000, for projects that address one (or several) of our current research themes, including (1) Genealogies and Epistemologies of the Global South; (2) Geopolitics, Information, and Culture; (3) The Global Future; (4) Media Work in the Global South. Projects that involve collaborations with academic, artistic, or practice-based and activist communities outside of NU-Q, whether in Qatar, at the Northwestern Evanston campus, or institutions based in the Global South are especially welcome to apply. In line with #IAS-NUQ’s mission, research or creative scholarship projects funded through the #IAS_NUQ Global South Research Grant program are expected to be multidisciplinary, multilingual, and contribute to knowledge and artistic production in, on, from, and with the Global South.
The inaugural #IAS_ NUQ Global South Research Grant was awarded to Northwestern University in Qatar Professor Khaled AL-Hroub, in collaboration with Abdullah Baabood, chair of the State of Qatar for Islamic Area Studies and visiting professor at the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University for The Arab Spring’s Islamists longue durée, a collaborative research project centered on understanding political change in the Arab region with a focus on democratization and Islamism.
