Thomas Plant’s public lecture “Decode & Empower: Using Simulations to Teach Media Literacy and Politics”

On 11 January, from 16:15 to 17:45, Thomas Plant, a Fulbright scholar from the United States, will give a public lecture “Decode & Empower: Using Simulations to Teach Media Literacy and Politics”, in Room 204 at Lossi 36.

In the upcoming lecture, Thomas Plant says that games are not just for kids. Wargames are educational tools that are well-positioned to prepare societies for the ever-increasing threat of mis/disinformation. However, wargames are limited in their capacity to teach media literacy: they are often designed for policymakers, not civilians, and focus on defence tactics, not education. Moreover, due to constraints on time and technology, they often struggle to recreate immersive information environments. This research project aims to develop wargames tailored to young adults (aged 18–20) to boost their media literacy skills and empower them to be competent and information-savvy citizens of democracy. The simulation will resemble an interactive ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ narrative featuring a national security threat, wherein the participants will solve game-like challenges through natural language inputs.  

Thomas Plant is a Fulbright scholar from the United States affiliated with the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence and hosted at Tallinn University of Technology’s Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance. Previously, Thomas worked at the national security firm Valens Global as the head of the department on domestic violent extremism and as a wargaming analyst. Thomas graduated with a BA in International Relations and Hispanic Studies from the College of William & Mary in 2022. At the college, he co-founded the USA’s first undergraduate disinformation research lab in 2020, DisinfoLab, and won the nationally competitive undergraduate Bobby R. Inman Award for papers on intelligence and national security in 2022.

Join via Zoom

Meeting ID: 969 2452 1721

Passcode: 740276