Abstract
Media literacy and prebunking interventions have shown promise in enhancing individuals’ ability to identify false information; however, cross-cultural research in this area is limited. This study investigates the effectiveness of two media literacy prebunking games, Gali Fakta and Harmony Square, in improving misinformation discernment among Indonesian and American participants. Gali Fakta, designed specifically for Indonesia, and Harmony Square, aimed at Western audiences, were compared against a Tetris control group. We assessed participants’ ability to evaluate and share news headlines, alongside their subjective engagement levels. The results revealed that Gali Fakta significantly improved sharing discernment among Indonesian participants, though it did not significantly enhance accuracy discernment. In contrast, Harmony Square showed no impact in Indonesia, while both games effectively improved sharing and accuracy discernment in the U.S. Engagement emerged as a critical factor, with higher levels correlating with better discernment across both groups. These findings highlight the significance of cultural relevance and engagement in media literacy interventions, suggesting that tailored prebunking approaches are essential for enhancing misinformation detection across diverse populations.
Data availability
The full survey questions, descriptive statistics, and correlation table of all variables are available on our article’s Open Science page (Facciani, Huang, & Weninger (2024). Contact the corresponding author for additional data requests. Access is available at: https://osf.io/e84zu/?view_only=25cf44d75b2948ab9f2552f8cea1758d.
References
Austin EW, Austin BW, Willoughby JF, Amram O, Domgaard S (2021) How media literacy and science media literacy predicted the adoption of protective behaviors amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. J. Health Commun. 26(4):239–252
Auxier B (2021, April 7). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/
Badrinathan S, & Chauchard S (2023). Researching and countering misinformation in the Global South. Curr Opi Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101733
Basol M, Roozenbeek J, & van der Linden S (2020). Good news about bad news: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cognitive immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.91
Bronstein MV, Vinogradov S (2021) Education alone is insufficient to combat online medical misinformation. EMBO Rep. 22(3):e52282. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.202052282
Cologna, V, Mede, NG, Berger, S, Besley, J, Brick, C, Joubert, M,…& Metag, J (2025). Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries. Nat Human Behav, 1–18
Compton J, van der Linden S, Cook J, Basol M (2021) Inoculation theory in the post-truth era: Extant findings and new frontiers for contested science, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Soc Personal Psychol Compass 15(6):e12602. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12602
Duran RL, Yousman B, Walsh KM, Longshore MA (2008) Holistic media education: An assessment of the effectiveness of a college course in media literacy. Commun Q. 56(1):49–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463370802662467
Edelman. (2025). 2025 Edelman trust barometer (Final report). https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-01/2025%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer_Final.pdf
Facciani M (2025). Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do About It. Columbia University Press
Facciani MJ, Apriliawati D, & Weninger T (2024). Playing Gali Fakta inoculates Indonesian participants against false information. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-152
Facciani M, Huang Q, & Weninger T (2024). Cross-Cultural Media Literacy Interventions: Comparing Gali Fakta and Harmony Square in Indonesia and the United States. Open Sci Framew. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/E84ZU
Gallup. (2024). Confidence in institutions. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Guess AM, Lerner M, Lyons B, Montgomery JM, Nyhan B, Reifler J, Sircar N (2020) A digital media literacy intervention increases discernment between mainstream and false news in the United States and India. Proc Natl Acad Sci 117(27):15536–15545. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920498117
Henrich J, Heine SJ, Norenzayan A (2010) Most people are not WEIRD. Nature 466(7302):29–29. https://doi.org/10.1038/466029a
Hoes E, Aitken B, Zhang J, Gackowski T, & Wojcieszak M (2024). Prominent misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase skepticism. Nature Human Behav, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01517-7
Iten N, Petko D (2016) Learning with serious games: Is fun playing the game a predictor of learning success?. Br J Educ Technol 47(1):151–163
Kahne J, Bowyer B (2017) Educating for democracy in a partisan age: Confronting the challenges of motivated reasoning and misinformation. Am Educ Res J 54(1):3–34. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216679817
Kim SJ, Schiffelbein JE, Imset I, Olson AL (2022) Countering antivax misinformation via social media: Message-testing randomized experiment for human papillomavirus vaccination uptake. J Med Internet Res 24(11):e37559. https://doi.org/10.2196/37559
Lamb K & Teresia A (2022, December 9). Indonesia’s new laws a threat to privacy, press and human rights, says UN. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesias-new-laws-threat-privacy-press-human-rights-says-un-2022-12-09/
Leder J, Schellinger LV, Maertens R, van der Linden S, Chryst B, Roozenbeek J (2024) Feedback exercises boost discernment of misinformation for gamified inoculation interventions. J Exp Psychol Gen 153(8):2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001314
Li J (2023). Not all skepticism is “healthy” skepticism: Theorizing accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism toward social media misinformation. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231179941
Liubinienė V, Thunqvist DP (2015) Media literacy and digital divide: a cross-cultural case study of Sweden and Lithuania. Creat Stud. 8(2):134–148
Livingstone, S, van Couvering, E, & Thumim, N (2014). Converging traditions of research on media and information literacies: Disciplinary, critical, and methodological issues. In Handbook of Research on New Literacies (pp. 103-132). Routledge
Maertens R, Götz FM, Golino HF, Roozenbeek J, Schneider CR, Kyrychenko Y, Kerr JR et al (2024) The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment. Behav Res Methods 56(3):1863–1899. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02069-7
Maertens R, Roozenbeek J, Simons J, Lewandowsky S, Maturo V, Goldberg B, Xu R, & van der Linden S. (2023). Psychological booster shots targeting memory increase long-term resistance against misinformation. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-152
McLaren BM, Adams DM, Mayer RE, Forlizzi J (2017) A computer-based game that promotes mathematics learning more than a conventional approach. Int J Game-Based Learn (IJGBL) 7(1):36–56
Neyazi TA, Yi Kai Ng A, Kuru O, Muhtadi B (2022) Who gets exposed to political misinformation in a hybrid media environment? The case of the 2019 Indonesian election. Soc Med Soc 8(3):20563051221122792
Roozenbeek, J, & van der Linden, S (2020). Breaking Harmony Square: A game that “inoculates” against political misinformation. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-002
Roozenbeek J, Traberg CS, van der Linden S (2022) Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation. R Soc Open Sci 9(5):211719. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211719
Soderborg S, Muhtadi B (2023) Resentment and polarization in Indonesia. J East Asian Stud 23(3):439–467
Singh N, Banga G (2022) Media and information literacy for developing resistance to ‘infodemic’: Lessons to be learned from the binge of misinformation during COVID-19 pandemic. Med Cult Soc 44(1):161–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211053464
Statista (2023) WhatsApp market share among messaging app users worldwide 2022, by country. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/
Walker M & Gottfried J (2019) Republicans far more likely than Democrats to say fact-checkers tend to favor one side. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/27/republicans-far-more-likely-than-democrats-to-say-factcheckers-tend-to-favor-one-side/
Wendratama, E & Yusuf, I (2023). COVID-19 Falsehoods on WhatsApp: Challenges and Opportunities in Indonesia. In: Soon, C (eds) Mobile Communication and Online Falsehoods in Asia. Mobile Communication in Asia: Local Insights, Global Implications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2225-2_2
Wong CML, Wu Y (2023) Limits to inoculating against the risk of fake news: A replication study in Singapore during COVID-19. J. Risk Res. 26(10):1037–1052. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2023.2172920
World Population Review. (2024). Facebook users by country 2024. World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-country
Acknowledgements
Funding of this work were supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Cooperative Agreement Number 7200AA18CA00059. We would like to thank USAID, Moonshot, Brave Factor, and IREX for their help during this project. We would also like to thank Farah Putri for their help in culturally adapting and translating Harmony Square.
Funding
Portions of this work were supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Cooperative Agreement Number 7200AA18CA00059.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
**[Author 1]** : Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Collection, Statistical Analysis, Writing – original draft. **[Author 2]** : Methodology, Statistical Analysis, Writing – review & editing. **[Author 3]** : Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical approval
Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at the University of Notre Dame (United States) on July 7, 2023 (Ethics Approval Number: #23-06-7934). The approved protocol specifically included international online survey recruitment. This study recruited participants from the United States and Indonesia through online survey platforms (Belindi and Respondi), without collaborative partnerships with foreign institutions. All participants completed identical procedures remotely through the same commercial survey platforms. The University of Notre Dame IRB reviewed and approved all study procedures for international participant populations in accordance with U.S. federal regulations and the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Consent was obtained digitally (written) via the survey platforms Belindi and Respondi prior to the commencement of data collection in January 2024. Participants were fully informed that their anonymity is assured, why the research was being conducted, and how their data would be utilized for academic purposes. Full informed consent can be viewed on our Open Science page: https://osf.io/e84zu/?view_only=25cf44d75b2948ab9f2552f8cea1758d.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Facciani, M., Huang, Q. & Weninger, T. Cross-cultural media literacy interventions: comparing Gali Fakta and Harmony Square in Indonesia and the United States. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06629-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06629-x
