Can gaming help youth counter populist challenges and fake news?

The DEMOS project created a game and a tool aimed at helping students develop democratic skills and values as well as fake news literacy to counter the impacts of exclusionary populist views, attitudes, and policies harming minority groups and dividing society.

DEMOS (Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe) is a research and innovation project studying populism and its impacts on democracy. Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, the project is carried out by 15 partner institutions in Europe and involves 10 scientific disciplines. DEMOS investigates the phenomenon of populism through the lenses of democratic efficacy. The idea combines attitudinal features (political efficacy), political skills, knowledge, and democratic opportunity structures. A novelty, democratic efficacy is understood as a condition of political engagement needed to address the challenges of populism.