Gong is participating in the implementation of the DETECT – Enhancing Digital Citizenship project, which aims to empower teachers and young people to recognize manipulative publications in social networks and resilience to the effects of disinformative political propaganda.
Manipulative political messages garner great attention, both on social networks and in the “real world”. Not only are they visible, they are also influential and will have an increasing impact on the outcomes of political campaigns.
Using manipulative technologies (such as “bots” on social networks) and disinformation campaigns, various groups and organizations attempt to move their narratives into the mainstream and disrupt voters’ approval of the values of liberal democracy.
These facts are especially important for young people. As demonstrated by the research of democratic competencies of young people in Croatia, young Internet users are informed about the world not only from their parents and peers, but primarily through Internet platforms such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It is therefore important to strengthen the active citizenship of young people through activities for building democratic competences that are not only conducted in classrooms, but online, in the space where social networks exist.
The main goals of the DETECT project are:
– enhancing the critical judgement skills of teachers and pupils, as well as their ability to recognize computational propaganda,
– empowering active digital citizenship.
In order to achieve these objectives, project partners will develop a teacher education programme that will familiarize them with the tools and strategies for manipulating opinions and behavior of the audience, such as algorithms, social network bots, “dark” posts and campaigns based on fraud. Teachers will then be able to develop educational activities for young people – primarily pupils and high school students – based on experiential learning.
The project partners are:
– Leibniz Universität Hannover, Institut für Didaktik der Demokratie (Germany)
– Demokratiezentrum Vienna (Austria)
– Center for European Refugees, Migration and Ethnic Studies, New Bulgarian University (Bulgaria)
– Center for Education and Qualification of Pedagogical Experts (Bulgaria)
– Gymnasium Pula (Croatia)
– Gong (Croatia)
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
