Online deception disproportionately target seniors to disastrous effect. The Deception Awareness and Resilience Training (DART) platform helps seniors recognize threats and protect themselves. A collaboration between researchers, game designers, and community organizations, DART is unique in tailoring its curriculum and using gamification to make training accessible and engaging for seniors.

The primary objectives of our proposed project are to:

1. Develop flexible technologies and culturally responsive group learning activities to facilitate communal examination and discussion of false and misleading information and inauthentic online behaviors in safe and familiar settings.
2. Conduct transdisciplinary research to advance our understanding of the impact of scams.
3. Identify and implement preventive (‘immunization’) strategies and mitigation practices.
   

The DART platform is an unprecedented transdisciplinary effort to improve user awareness and build their resilience to deception in social media. Our project is distinctive in its integration of a breadth of research fields and methods into a convergent research approach to knowledge creation and problem-solving in collaboration with community partners. DART is designed for joined social experiences and learning, distinguishing it from existing gamified platforms and cyber ranges and allowing us to take full advantage of our team’s expertise in both STEM and non-STEM fields. It also helps us establish meaningful collaborations with a range of partners and facilitate optimal integration with flexibility built-in for further growth and reach into additional areas and community partnerships.

DART is also a unique research platform that can serve as a valuable observation desk and data-gathering tool for the study of the harmful effects of deception in our social media ecosystem. We expect that it will enable researchers from a wide range of fields develop comprehensive methods and strategies to improve the user awareness and resilience of diverse demographics and groups, especially in underserved communities.