House of disinformation

Trolls, botnets, deep fakes, counterfeits and social media. All new words, but they start to become part of our daily vocabulary. Together they form the structure used by current disinformation campaigns with the goal to confuse society and distort trust in democracy. From flight MH17 to the conflicts in Ukraine and Georgia to warnings against vaccinations.

Disinformation is playing an increasing role in our global society and digitalization supports and speeds up the process. The internet allows anyone the publishes anything they want, which in turn can be accessed by anyone else. The role of traditional media is lost. Any piece of information online can been seen as truth. We have to learn what the traditional media did for us, judging the truthfulness and reliability of the source.

More than ever it is important to not become an as easy target. By understanding the underlying structure of disinformation, any individual can train the necessary skills to recognize fake news and other manipulative techniques in real life.

The house of disinformation deals with these issues, using the common analogy of construction. Both houses and disinformation have a very clear structure and order in which they are created. However, in the final state, the structure is not always clearly visible. By deconstructing the house, narrative, the structure will reveal itself step by step.

The house of disinformation is an installation that invites to play a game; the disinformation game. Guided by a game leader, people construct their own disinformation narrative in the shape of a house. When the construction is done, together with the game leader, the narrative is deconstructed again. Through this deconstruction, a solid understanding of the structure of disinformation is created. Which in the end helps to recognize and judge disinformation in the real world.