As part of my final year at university I completed a Design Honours Research Project. Targeted at combatting misinformation during the pandemic, my project encompasses not only my final outcome but the prototypes I created along the way.
My online intervention includes a Facebook page and a series of personas I have designed to expose individuals to the campaign. While the issue of misinformation is housed on most social media platforms, I specifically chose to focus on Facebook as it is marketed as a networking platform designed to ‘bring the world closer together’. They house a wider demographic of people, making it easier for the message to spread across multiple demographics.
Many use Facebook to escape their daily routine. I have played into this notion by taking a satirical approach to this campaign to reflect the tone of voice and behaviours of those on the platform. As a result, the online intervention steps away from the visual identity that I used to design my stickers. Using language that sits within the context of social media, you’ll notice that this work has a separate identity to that of my stickers.
My Facebook personas take a more personal approach to target the individual’s behaviour by intervening within the echo chambers that house misinformation. By attempting to friend individuals, the work uses the networking medium to hack the system. I have used the design activism technique of pranking rhetoric to achieve this. Using names that are puns on misinformation, along with bad stock images, they are a spoof to grab the attention of users, while also making a comment on how easily things can be misinterpreted and adapted on Facebook to serve a different agenda.
Excerpts from my Facebook page which can also be found here
