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Facing the Appeal of Social Networks: Methodologies and Tools to Support Students Towards a Critical Use of the Web

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Facing the Appeal of Social Networks: Methodologies and Tools to Support Students Towards a Critical Use of the Web Facing the Appeal of Social Networks: Methodologies and Tools to Support Students towards a Critical Use of the Web Elisa Puvia, Vito Monteleone a, Giovanni Fulantelli b and Davide Taibi c Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche, Palermo, Italy Keywords: Cognitive Style, Analytical Thinking, Social Networks, Educational Settings, Fake News Detection, Artificial Intelligence in Education, Instagram-like Platform. Abstract: In the present contribution, we introduce an integrated approach, grounded both on cognitive and computer science, to strengthen the capacity of adolescent students in discerning information on the Web and on social networks. The proposed approach includes methodologies and tools aimed at promoting critical thinking in students. It has been structured in four main operational phases to facilitate implementation and replication, and it is currently tested with 77 high-school students (14 − 16 years old). Preliminary insights from this pilot study are also presented in this paper. We argue that the integrated approach can be comprised in a more general framework designed to boost competences of reasoning of students, which are crucial in promoting fake news detection and, consequently, in preventing the spreading of on line false information. 1 INTRODUCTION in the educational settings have been widely investi- gated. In particular, social networks have been used The Internet is a global phenomenon, affecting pri- by teachers to share information and communicate vate and public life immensely. It has evolved into with pupils, they have been also used to support self- a ubiquitous digital environment in which people ac- regulated learning to connect informal and formal cess content (e.g. Web), communicate (e.g. social learning. The structure of the most used social net- networks), and seek information (e.g. search en- works such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has gines). The Internet search engines are more and been also investigated in terms of their ability to foster more often used as a source of information on the interactions and contents sharing (Thompson, 1995; Web, and also in educational contexts they are widely Chelmis and Prasanna, 2011), feelings (Kaplan and used by pupils in the acquisition of new knowledge on Haenlein, 2010), opinions, and sentiments expres- a specific topic (Taibi et al., 2017; Taibi et al., 2020). sions (Pang et al., 2008). However, if from one hand For example, Search As Learning is a recent research the Internet and its tools support new communication topic aimed at investigating the learning activity as an dynamics able to reach a wider number of persons, outcome of the information seeking process (Ghosh on the other hand these characteristics have generated et al., 2018). However, search engines are optimized issues that cannot be ignored. Indeed, Internet has for acquiring factual knowledge and they are effective also introduced challenges that imperil the well-being for specific types of search, but they do not support of individuals and the functioning of democratic soci- searching as learning tasks (Krathwohl and Anderson, eties, such as the rapid spread of false information and 2009; Marchionini, 2006). In fact, search engines are online manipulation of public opinion (e.g., (Brad- not purposely designed to facilitate learning activities shaw and Howard, 2019; Kelly et al., 2017), as well as such as understanding or synthesis, given that they do new forms of social malpractice such as cyberbullying not offer mechanisms to support iteration, reflection (Kowalski et al., 2014) and online incivility (Ander- and analysis of results by the searcher. son et al., 2014). Social networks play a predominant role in the The negative effects of these challenges are even communication between individuals, and their use more exacerbated when it comes to young adoles- cents, specially when they use the Web to shape their a https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7600-1251 understanding and acquire knowledge on a new topic. b https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4098-8311 Moreover, the Internet is no longer an unconstrained c https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0785-6771 567 Puvia, E., Monteleone, V., Fulantelli, G. and Taibi, D. Facing the Appeal of Social Networks: Methodologies and Tools to Support Students towards a Critical Use of the Web. DOI: 10.5220/0009571105670573 In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2020) - Volume 1, pages 567-573 ISBN: 978-989-758-417-6 Copyright c 2020 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved CSEDU 2020 - 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education and independent cyberspace but a highly controlled 2015). Another challenging consequence of algorith- environment. Online, whether people are access- mic filtering is the algorithmic bias (Bozdag, 2013; ing information through search engines or social me- Corbett-Davies et al., 2017; Fry, 2018), which intro- dia, their access is regulated by algorithms and rec- duces biases in data processing and consequences at a ommender systems with little transparency or public societal level, such as discrimination (e.g., gender or oversight. We argued that one way to address this racial biases). imbalance is with interventions that empower adoles- However, at a closer look, algorithms are designed cents, as Internet users, to gain some control over their by human beings, and they rely on existing data gen- digital environments, in part by boosting their infor- erated by human beings. They are therefore likely mation literacy and their cognitive resistance to ma- not only to generate biases due to technical limita- nipulation. As a consequence, adolescents need to be tions, but also reinforce existing biases and beliefs. equipped with a more informed use of social media Relatedly, it has been argued that personalized filter- and the Internet. ing on social media platforms may be instrumental In this contribution we present an integrated ap- in creating “filter bubbles” (Pariser, 2011) or “echo proach that includes methodologies and tools aimed chambers” (Sunstein, 2018). Both filter bubbles and at promoting critical thinking in adolescent students. echo chambers are environments in which individu- This approach will help students in perceiving and als are exposed to information selected by algorithms elaborating on line information in a more critical way, according to a viewer’s previous behaviours (Bakshy in order to face the challenges posed by the digital en- et al., 2015), amplifying as a result the confirmation vironments in which they are imbued. bias – a way to search for and interpret information that reinforces pre-existing beliefs. Concerning social networks, a wide variety of ar- 2 RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS, tificial intelligence algorithms is adopted to target the purposed audience on social media. The fundamental ALGORITHMS AND OTHER idea of the use of these algorithms on social networks DIGITAL TRAPS is to optimize the content for the users. There is a wide literature on the application of AI in social me- One of the main challenging aspects of online en- dia to capture the trends and the moods of users (Sal- vironments is represented by the way in which they loum et al., 2017; Ching et al., 2015; van Dam and shape information search. Indeed, information is Van De Velden, 2015; Del Vicario et al., 2017). Previ- filtered and mediated by personalized recommender ous studies have shown that young adolescents are not systems and algorithmic filtering. Algorithmic filter- aware of the presence of AI algorithms during their ing and personalization are not inherently malicious experiences in social networks and the contents that technologies. On the contrary, they are helpful mech- are shown to them are considered as spontaneous. As anisms that support people in navigating the over- an interdisciplinary science of thinking, psychologi- whelming amount of information on the Internet. In cal science can inform interventions to counteract the a similar vein, news feeds on social media strive to challenges that digital environments pose (Kozyreva show news that is interesting to users. So, filtering in- et al., 2019). Indeed, cognitive science has developed formation on the Internet is indispensable and helpful. some very general insights into how we perceive and All in all, these mechanisms act as filters between the elaborate on line information that can be critical in abundance of information and the scarcity of human understanding general cognitive preferences. attention. However, they are not without some notable It has been proposed that one of the factors that problems. One general problem is that the decision on could explain the success of online misinformation such personalized content is being delegated to a vari- is that it appeals to general cognitive preferences, in ety of algorithms without a clear understanding of the that it fits with our cognitive predispositions (Acerbi, mechanisms underlying the resulting decisions. 2019). While we acknowledge that several boosts Delegating decisions results in a people’s gradual could be implemented, we decided to elaborate an in- loss of control over their personal information and a tegrated approach grounded both on cognitive science related decline in human agency and autonomy (An- and technological tools to strengthen the capacity of derson et al., 2018; Mittelstadt et al., 2016; Zarsky, students in discerning information on the Internet. In 2016). the next section
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