Abstract
Today’s young generation uses a variety of social media as part of their everyday life. This can be seen as an enrichment, but it is also the source of various threats: Filter bubbles and echo chambers are general phenomena that counter-balance free communication and exchange and can lead to toxic radicalization confirmation bias and polarization. Conspiracy theories, fake news are two phenomena that can change the social media user perspective about the facts. This paper reports on the development of a web-based learning environment that includes a dedicated “learning companion” to help students in raising their understanding, resilience, and critical thinking related to such social media threats. The point is not to protect young people from such threats through a type of censorship but to help them develop their own strategies to identify and counteract such influences. The web-based learning environment mimics Instagram as a well-known social medium. The actual companion is realized as a browser plugin with an underlying architecture that supports xAPI logging as well as the connection to intelligent backend components.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Reality Check: The Game https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/educational-games/reality-check-game, 2021.
- 2.
A social Media Companion Safeguarding and Education Students couragecompanion.eu.
- 3.
PixelFed is a decentralized open-source Instagram-like photo-sharing network based on the Activity Pub protocol, making it suitable for applying it in research experiments, https://pixelfed.social/. (2021).
- 4.
WIT-AI is a tool to Build Natural Language Experiences https://wit.ai, 2021.
- 5.
React JS is A JavaScript library for building user interfaces https://reactjs.org, 2021.
- 6.
Standard Chrome extension consists of three main modules: 1. Background and content script – https://developer.Chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/getstarted, Manifest file 2021.
- 7.
NodeJS is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, 2021.
- 8.
MongoDB, document-based, distributed database built for modern application, 2021.
- 9.
Learning-Locker used to store learning activity statements generated by xAPI compliant learning activitieshttps://docs.learninglocker.net/welcome/, 2021.
References
Sprugnoli, R., Menini, S., Tonelli, S., Oncini, F., Piras, E.: Creating a Whatsapp dataset to study pre-teen cyberbullying. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Abusive Language Online (ALW2), June 2019, pp. 51–59 (2019). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/w18-5107
Aizenkot, D., Kashy-Rosenbaum, G.: Cyberbullying in WhatsApp classmates’ groups: evaluation of an intervention program implemented in Israeli elementary and middle schools. New Media Soc. 20(12), 4709–4727 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818782702
Eden, S., Heiman, T., Olenik-Shemesh, D.: Teachers’ perceptions, beliefs and concerns about cyberbullying. Br. J. Edu. Technol. 44(6), 1036–1052 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01363.x
Silverman, C., Singer-Vine, J.: Most Americans who see fake news believe it, new survey says. BuzzFeed (2016)
Bucher, T.: The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Inf. Commun. Soc. 20(1), 30–44 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1154086
Rowland, F.: The filter bubble: what the internet is hiding from you. Portal: Lib. Acad. 11(4), 1009–1011 (2011)
Colleoni, E., Rozza, A., Arvidsson, A.: Echo chamber or public sphere? predicting political orientation and measuring political homophily in twitter using big data. J. commun. 64(2), 317–332 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12084.
Schmidt, R.E.: Legacy of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann: The spiral of silence and other controversies. Eur. J. Commun. 30(3), 353–363, https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323115589265
Ross, B., Pilz, L., Cabrera, B., Brachten, F., Neubaum, G., Stieglitz, S.: Are social bots a real threat? an agent-based model of the spiral of silence to analyse the impact of manipulative actors in social networks. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 28(4), 394–412 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2018.1560920
De Jans, S., Hudders, L., Herrewijn, L., Van Geit, K., Cauberghe, V.: Serious games going beyond the call of duty: Impact of an advertising literacy mini-game platform on adolescents’ motivational outcomes through user experiences and learning outcomes. Cyberpsychology 13(2) (2019). https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2019-2-3.
Titley, G., Keen, E., Földi, L.: Three studies about online hate speech and ways to address it (2014)
Chou, C.Y., Chan, T.W., Lin, C.J.: Redefining the learning companion: the past, present, and future of educational agents. Comput. Educ. 40(3), 255–269 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(02)00130-6
Chi, M.T.H., Bassok, M., Lewis, M.W., Reimann, P., Glaser, R.: Self-explanations: how students study and use examples in learning to solve problems. Cogn. Sci. 13(2), 145–182 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1016/0364-0213(89)90002-5
Aleven, V., Beal, C.R., Graesser, A.C.: Introduction to the special issue on advanced learning technologies. J. Educ. Psychol. 105(4), 929–931 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034155
Katz, S., Albacete, P., Chounta, I.A., Jordan, P., Mclaren, B.M., Zapata-Rivera, D.: Linking dialogue with student modelling to create an adaptive tutoring system for conceptual physics. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ. 31(3), 1–49 (2021)
Goodman, B., Linton, F., Gaimari, R.: Encouraging student reflection and articulation using a learning companion: a commentary. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ. 26(1), 474–488 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-015-0041-4
Hietala, P., Niemirepo, T.: The competence of learning companion agents. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ. (IJAIED) 9, 178–192 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Aprin, F., Manske, S., Chounta, IA., Hoppe, H.U. (2021). Is This Fake or Credible? A Virtual Learning Companion Supporting the Judgment of Young Learners Facing Social Media Content. In: Zhou, W., Mu, Y. (eds) Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2021. ICWL 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13103. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90785-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90785-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90784-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90785-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)