(from top left) Nugrahardi Ramadhani, Renny Pradina Kusumawardani, Naufan Noordyanto, (bottom) Rabendra Yudistira Alamin, Putri Dwitasari, Nurina Orta Darmawati, and Didit Prasetyo

ITS Campus, ITS News – Data from the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2020 states that Indonesia ranks fifth in the world in spreading rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories related to Covid-19. Moving on from these problems, the Community Service Team (Abmas) of the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh November (ITS) is here to develop an educational game to improve reading quality and public awareness of the dangers of hoax news.

This product-based Abmas team consists of seven lecturers from the ITS Visual Communication Design (DKV) Department and the ITS Information Systems (SI) Department. The seven lecturers are Nugrahardi Ramadhani SSn MT, Rabendra Yudistira Alamin ST MDs, Putri Dwitasari ST MDs, Nurina Orta Darmawati ST MDs, Didit Prasetyo ST MT, Naufan Noordyanto SSn MSn from the ITS DKV Department, and Renny Pradina Kusumawardani ST MT from the Department SI ITS.

The head of the Abmas team, Nugrahardi Ramadhani SSn MT, explained that this Abmas project resulted from the collaboration of the ITS Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the ITS DKV Department the Indonesian Anti-Defamation Society (Mafindo). This project has a concept with game mechanics, such as achievement, motivation, learning, and challenge. “Compared to the concept of an entertaining game, our gamification combines it with the learning process,” he explained.

Front view of an anti-hoax game created by the ITS Abmas Team based on the short novel of Pramana Sahwahit

Starting from this idea, this team felt moved, especially as a department whose competence was different from other departments, so that it had to innovate according to its field. On the other hand, educating the public is thought to require unusual creative media, and the public must be given education. “Therefore, a game called Pramana Sahwahita was published which is pac, kaged with the visual novel genre,” he said.

The man familiarly called Dhani explained that the name Pramana Sahwahita itself means seeking knowledge for the truth that benefits all of us, of course for the benefit of humanity. With this in mind, the Abmas Team will serve as an extension of ITS to help partners, observing community characteristics from hoax content circulating in the community.

This DKV Department lecturer admitted that the primary purpose of this game is role play, where the public will be actively involved in making and spreading hoax news so that it is hoped that it can increase public awareness in the future in attitude.

The appearance of the Pramana Sahwahita game, designed by the ITS Abmas Team, in the process of proving hoaxes in the community

He conveyed that in this challenging game, the public will be presented with Covid-19-themed news and invited to guess and prove hoax news. In addition, players will also be directed to the following action: reporting false information, not acting, or helping to spread the word back to others.

Although this game is still in prototype form, the team managed to present an attractive visual and consists of 15 levels, where each group has dialogues or info about hoax news. Each of these actions will get accumulated points and will be categorized as to whether they are worthy of being a hoax producer netizen, a passive user, or worthy of being a hoax eradication agent.

With this game, Dhani hopes that the spread of hoax news can be minimized starting from a small scope. Thus, it is also expected that the public will be more aware of the truth of the information circulating through fact-checking before reacting.

Unmitigated, Dhani also hopes that his colleagues in the Abmas Team will continue to be anti-hoax agents in their respective places who will later be able to help and be called upon to handle the problem of managing information for the sake of the homeland. “This is one of our real efforts with the government to tackle the spread of news, and the handling of Covid-19 can run smoothly,” he said. (ITS Public Relation)

Reporter: Fauzan Fakhrizal Azmi