Critical Digital Literacy
The promotion of digital literacy combined with critical thinking (SubProject#2) is arguably the most efficient way to tackle “fake news” and disinformation online. It has been proven to work in Finland, where five years after introducing such programs, the country has declared victory in the fight against “fake news”. Inspired by Finland’s example, this sub-project aims at promoting critical digital literacy in Qatar. We plan to achieve this through a general media literacy platform that would teach citizens and residents of Qatar how to recognize “fake news” and propaganda techniques. The platform will have lessons and exploration capabilities. It will feature tools to analyze news, social media posts, or any custom text in Arabic and English, and it would make explicit the propaganda/persuasion techniques of the discussed issues.
The tool will look for persuasion techniques such as appeal to emotions (e.g., fear, prejudices, smears, etc.) as well as logical fallacies (e.g., black & white fallacies, bandwagon, etc.). By interacting with the platform, users will become aware of the ways they can be manipulated by “fake news”, and thus they would be less likely to act based on it and also less likely to share it further, which is critical for limiting the potential impact of organized disinformation campaigns online. We will further study the role of critical digital literacy on people’s resilience to online manipulation and influence, whether legitimate, e.g., in e-commerce, or malicious, e.g., in social engineering and phishing. This literacy will also cover understanding the influence of the algorithms and the designs used in digital media, i.e., we will go beyond the literacy of how to recognize threats and how to respond to them to understand the underlying mechanics of influence and deception online.
It can be a valid argument, typically made by social media companies, that people shall be primarily responsible for managing their traits, weaknesses, worries, stress, and jealousy, whether in physical or online worlds. Generally, self-regulation is expected from users of social media. However, we argue that social media design can become too immersive and, at times, addictive. Hence, we argue that social media shall reduce triggers leading to a loss of control over their usage. Digital addiction is associated with reduced productivity and distracting sleep. Fear of missing out (FoMO) is one manifestation of how users become overly preoccupied with online spaces. We have argued that a thoughtful design process shall equip users with tools to manage it, e.g. creative versions of auto-reply, coloring schemes, and filters. Such a design can benefit those who are highly susceptible to peer pressure and possess low impulse control.
Objectives
To build a high-quality corpus annotated with propaganda and its techniques.
To develop a system for detecting the use of propaganda and its techniques in text in Arabic and English with a focus on Qatar and social media.
To develop an online platform for teaching critical digital literacy and then use the platform to study the role of critical digital literacy on people’s resilience to online manipulation and influence.
Meet Critical Digital Literacy Team members...
FIROJ ALAM
Critical Digital Literacy
WAJDI ZAGHOUANI
GEORGE MIKROS
GIOVANNI DA SAN MARTINO
PRESLAV NAKOV
MARAM HASANAIN
FATEMA AHMAD
MUAADH NOMAN
Publications
QCRI at SemEval-2023 Task 3: News Genre, Framing and Persuasion Techniques Detection Using Multilingual Models Proceedings Article
In: Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2023), pp. 1237–1244, Association for Computational Linguistics, Toronto, Canada, 2023.
Overview of the CLEF-2023 CheckThat! Lab Task 1 on Check-Worthiness in Multimodal and Multigenre Content Proceedings Article
In: Aliannejadi, Mohammad; Faggioli, Guglielmo; Ferro, Nicola; Vlachos,; Michalis, (Ed.): Working Notes of CLEF 2023–Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2023.
Overview of the CLEF-2023 CheckThat! Lab Task 2 on Subjectivity in News Articles Proceedings Article
In: Aliannejadi, Mohammad; Faggioli, Guglielmo; Ferro, Nicola; Vlachos,; Michalis, (Ed.): Working Notes of CLEF 2023–Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2023.
Overview of the CLEF-2023 CheckThat! Lab Task 3 on Political Bias of News Articles and News Media Proceedings Article
In: Aliannejadi, Mohammad; Faggioli, Guglielmo; Ferro, Nicola; Vlachos,; Michalis, (Ed.): Working Notes of CLEF 2023–Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2023.
Overview of the CLEF-2023 CheckThat! Lab Task 4 on Factuality of Reporting of News Media Proceedings Article
In: Aliannejadi, Mohammad; Faggioli, Guglielmo; Ferro, Nicola; Vlachos,; Michalis, (Ed.): Working Notes of CLEF 2023–Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2023.