Training Media Professionals on Applying Digital Technologies to Combat Disinformation (ANALYSIS)

Funded by: European Union • ERASMUS+ Cooperation Partnerships in Vocational Education and Training
Duration: December 2022 – June 2025
PI: Hajo Boomgaarden
Collaboration: Sebastian Edward Sherrah

The joint project ANALYSIS aims to support news organizations and employees in mastering news verification with digitally supported learning processes and learning by doing strategies.

The aim of ANALYSIS is the creation of a collaborative knowledge-transfer consortium that will produce high-quality learning opportunities for media professionals advancing their digital competencies in regards of using online archives and databases, collaborate in digital environments, encrypt communications, thoroughly investigate suspicious stories by checking their metadata, digital footprint, visual manipulation forensics, satellite imaginary, and so on. The project intends to contribute to the development of a media ecosystem that is competent, highly trained and uses advanced, high-impact digital technologies to combat disinformation. Based on the identified labor market needs of the analysis we conducted, a syllabus will be designed focused on technology-enhanced learning, state of the art digital tools, collaborative learning and flexible teaching practices. The yet to be developed products will facilitate access to vocational training resources, increase the attractiveness and flexibility of opportunities of VET while contributing to the digital transformation of the media sector.

The project explores the emergence of social issues on social media, which we observe in popular hashtag campaigns such as #metoo or #blacklivesmatter. These issues begin as discussions on social media, and with time, they can become crucial topics that evoke strong emotions and get everyone talking. At a certain point of viral spread, the issues are picked up by professional news media and make their way into the mainstream. It is extremely relevant for democracy and civil society to define which issues are important and need political and societal action, and the continuous development of social media will only increase its importance. However, science still needs a complete explanation of how such issues emerge and grow, as previously, researchers looked at different factors in isolation only.

As a starting point the project team theorizes that social issue emergence involves two parallel and seemingly contradictory processes: first, the viral spread of the issue on social media (for example, via hashtags and reposts), and second, control attempts by groups and individuals (for example, an activist group spreading a certain message or a celebrity sharing a personal story under a particular hashtag). These processes will be studied in-depth to understand their underlying logic and investigate which groups participate in the hashtag debates in which stages and in what way. In order to find this out, the project team will interview actors involved in social issue emergence, such as social media activists. Additionally, content on many social issues from social media, alternative media, and news will be analyzed with the help of machine learning algorithms. Further, the team will examine how issues evolve and debates on them change over time. Based on these empirical insights, a computer simulation showing how social issues develop and spread on social media platforms will be created.