Results: Epistemology

Journalism.net players learn about the epistemology of journalists during gameplay, and they begin to use this information to make decisions about their actions and the information that they have. For example: In the pre- and post-interviews for Science.net, we asked players to evaluate whether scientific information would make a good news story if it were written up in the news, and to describe what they would do if they were given this information.

A typical pre-interview response: “I’d get more information on it, because there isn’t very much here, and I’d probably, like, ask some people what they thought… just people… [and] I might try and find out like what the way is to change the genes.”

A typical post-interview response: “I would go and interview whatever scientist that discovered this. And then I would interview a few environmentalists about whats happening. It would give me all the information of the story and would give me opposing sides of view… Because it could be biased if you just include the scientist or the environmentalist point of view… You want both sides of view to be included in the story.”