About

What is Harmony Square? Harmony Square is a game about fake news. The game’s setting is the idyllic Harmony Square, a small neighborhood mildly obsessed with democracy. You, the player, are hired as Chief Disinformation Officer. Over the course of 4 short levels, your job is to disturb the square’s peace and quiet by fomenting internal divisions and pitting its residents against each other. How does the game work? The goal of the game is to expose the tactics and manipulation techniques that are used to mislead people, build up a following, or exploit societal tensions for political purposes. Harmony Square works as a psychological “vaccine” against disinformation: playing it builds cognitive resistance against common forms of manipulation that you may encounter online. Scientists who worked with us on the development of this game found that playing Harmony Square improves people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques in social media posts, increases their confidence in spotting such techniques, and reduces their willingness to share manipulative content with people in their network. The results of this study were published in the journal Harvard Misinformation Review, and can be found here. For more information about the scientific evaluation of Harmony Square, please contact this email address. Who should play this game? Harmony Square was written with an audience in mind of ages 15 and up. The game contains minor references to mild forms of violence (including rude language on a fictional social media network, although no swear words are used), but doesn’t feature content that is likely to be perceived as graphically shocking. While the game does contain some references to real-world events, its scenarios are entirely fictional. Effort has been made to make the game as inclusive as possible, and it can be enjoyed by players from all backgrounds. Data Protection & Fair Use We do not collect any identifying information or other data from individual players. However, we do track how many people have played the game and visited the website, entirely anonymously. No humans, swans or living statues were harmed in the making of this game. Harmony Square contains references to pop culture and makes use of images (in the form of memes) that may contain copyrighted material. As these images have been significantly altered for a limited and transformative purpose, they fall under fair use. Specifically, the original work has been transformed by adding new expression or meaning to the original copyrighted image. More information about fair use and memes can be found here and here. In addition, the European Parliament has stated that “… memes or GIFs can be shared freely”, and its copyright directive specifically exempts memes from being subject to copyright claims in the European Union. Development and funding The U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have, in collaboration with DROG and the University of Cambridge, financially supported the development and tailoring of Harmony Square within the scope of addressing foreign adversarial propaganda and disinformation and its impact on foreign audiences and elections overseas. The GEC seeks to “facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among federal department and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources and implementing best practices” in order to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and foreign non-state propaganda and disinformation” (NDAA section 1287). In support of this mission, the GEC’s Technology Engagement Team collaborated in tailoring Harmony Square to address the challenges of foreign adversarial propaganda and disinformation that could impact foreign elections. Harmony Square is an example of how the GEC’s programmatic initiatives – the Tech Demo Series and the Testbed – assist in identifying and testing tools to facilitate unique technological approaches to countering propaganda and disinformation. CISA works with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborate to build more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future.