3.1.3. Intervention Procedure
In this study, the intervention was administered via the WeChat Mini program in the form of an online game. The interventions in the WeChat application were developed based on the intervention materials from Study 1; specifically, participants were presented with numerous pieces of news and decided whether the news was a fact or misinformation. Participants then received feedback on their answers and were provided with explanations if the news contained misinformation. The intervention lasted for five consecutive days, and 12 different pieces of news materials were presented randomly each day. To ensure that participants were seriously engaged in the intervention, we excluded those who responded correctly on less than 50% of the items.To gamify the intervention and increase adherence, we added competition and achievement elements. The competition system recorded the scores of participants regarding their responses to the news, and all participants’ accumulated scores were ranked. The scores were influenced by whether the participant assessed the news correctly and the speed of their response. The achievement system provided badges when the cumulative percentage of correct answers to questions of a specific misinformation type (i.e., conspiracy, impersonation, emotion, and spreading false knowledge) reached 80%. Participants were informed of all elements in the Mini program in the form of a prompt box the first time they participated in the game.