Abstract
Misinformation on social media continues to be a modern plague in many societies worldwide. This study is the first, to my knowledge, to introduce both individual and social gamification approaches to increase self-determination, self-efficacy, and accuracy in correctly identifying fake news. Gamification is a promising strategy for fake news identification by introducing game elements in non-game contexts to increase individuals’ intrinsic motivation and promote desired behavioral outcomes. A total of 124 individuals participated in this experiment and were randomly assigned to a social gamification, individual gamification, or control group. The findings indicate that self-determination and self-efficacy are positive drivers of performance in identifying fake news. Furthermore, individual and social gamification can strengthen an individual’s self-determination, efficacy, and accuracy in the fake news identification task. This study provides initial evidence that gamification is an effective strategy in improving the accuracy of which individuals can accurately identify fake news.