The information circuit role-playing game

Presentation of the activity

In the information circuit role-playing game, participants play the roles of the various actors involved in creating information:

• actors, witnesses, journalists, editors, and technical presenters.

The aim is to raise their awareness of the difficulties inherent in accurately and objectively transcribing a fact, especially when it is based on witness accounts.

Objectives

– Enable young people to understand, visualize, and identify the players in the information chain.

– Put participants in the shoes of media players (role-playing game).

First, divide the participants into five groups. Each group will have a role to play in the information cycle, representing the different stages presented in the section on the information cycle in Teaching Sheet 3.

Proper completion of this exercise requires that the different groups do not come into contact before interactions and exchanges planned for the exercise (ideally, participants should be asked to leave the room and then re-enter in groups).

Activity schedule

1. At first, the first group invents an event of public interest. For example, a car accident involving a political figure, a workers’ protest following the closure of their factory, or the arrest of a celebrity (a pop star or a well-known actor). After consulting apart from the other groups, the group must mime/perform/draw the event in question in front of the second group only.
2. The second group, whose members play the role of witnesses, attends alone the performance of the event, played by the first group, and informs the media.
3. The third group, that of the journalists, then comes into play: its members listen to the testimonies of the witnesses (from group 2) and verify the information by cross-checking the testimonies through interviews based on what journalists call the “5Ws” (When = When? Where = Where? Who = Who? What = What? Why = Why?).
4. The fourth group, that of the editors (kept apart since the beginning) gathers the interview reports and is responsible for writing a brief (that is, a short synthetic article that summarizes the event by answering the “5Ws”).
5. This brief is transmitted to the members of the fifth group (presenters and technicians), who disseminate the information as it was reported to them, through an audio or video recording or by simulating a TV news broadcast, for example.

The 4 groups responsible for circulating the information (from the witnesses to the broadcasting) will have the delicate task of transmitting the information as completely and neutrally as possible. However, it may be interesting to deliberately cause the proper execution of this exercise to fail, for example by asking one of the witnesses from the second group to lie about what they saw or to invent a conspiracy around the event.

A quick debriefing of the exercise will allow the following questions to be raised:

• Was the information transmitted faithfully? Did the last group report information close to the reality of the facts?
• What difficulties are inherent to each stage/role?
• What are the constraints/margins of maneuver of each group concerning the processing of information?