DAMLAC - Digital and media literacy for active citizenship

Digital and Media Literacy for Active Citizenship

ISBN 9788894235289

Released in February 2022 under Creative Commons Licence

CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Why this publication?

November 2021, representatives of several European youth organizations met to discuss together the need to strengthen competences on the topic of digital literacy and media literacy and how indispensable these are today for the exercise of active citizenship, especially by young people.

events of recent decades, starting with the revolutions and 'springs' in the Mediterranean countries and then with many human and civil rights movements in different parts of the world, have highlighted the positive potential that the use of digital tools can have for these movements.

At the same time, however, already during the lockdown, the massive recourse to the digital as an " all-embracing" tool in the organisation of daily life, but then even more so, and in a resounding way, the events of 6 January 2021 with the storming of Capitol Hill in the United States, have posed the need for a deeper reflection on how everything connected to the "cyber" and digital world has an impact on democratic processes, on the possibility of being (or not being) active in society, on how the same media and digital tools can be exploited to condition democratic life and choices.

publication is therefore the result of a reflection made by the participants and organisations involved in the November 2021 meeting and is offered as a tool for in-depth study and knowledge to anyone who wants to approach the topic of digital and media literacy as an indispensable tool for active and democratic participation, not only among and with young people

At the same time, it provides an overview of the actual digital tools that citizens and movements, especially in Europe, can use to make their voice heard and, in some cases, have a full active and formal role in the democratic processes of the European Institutions.

1 Digital tools: support or danger for democracy?

Social networks, from heaven to dust

How is it possible that, in the space of a few years, roughly between the end of 2010 and the end of 2020, social networks and, more generally, digital communication tools have gone from being seen as a great instrument of freedom and democracy (so much so that it has been suggested that Facebook and Twitter should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) to being seen as a danger to institutions, to relations between people and to civil democratic coexistence?

Symbolic images of this change are the covers of the well-known weekly Times, which in the immediate aftermath of the so-called 'Arab revolutions' named Mark Zuckerberg Man of the Year in 2010, and at the end of 2020 wondered whether it might not be necessary to delete Facebook.

Since the early 2000s, we have witnessed a long series of social movements of different kinds and in very different parts of the world. From the "Me Too" in the US in 2006 to the protests in Latin America in 2019 and 2020, through the so-called "Arab Springs", "Black Lives Matter", "EuroMaidan" in Ukraine, "Friday for the Future" and Hong Kong, and many other moments of protest that have always had a common element: the use of social networks and the Internet to promote and organise the activities of

movements, to compare ideas and proposals. These experiences, some of which are still ongoing, have given rise to the myth of the Internet, and even more so of social networks, as great instruments of democracy.

A debate that, thanks also to various scientific studies carried out by universities and specialised centres, was then extended to the world of "social" communication in its "algorithmic" sense, that is, based on algorithms that filter and organise what users see online.

What radically changed the perception of these digital tools were two global political events in 2016: the Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections.

Immediately after each of these votes, some of which went against the pollsters' predictions, there was a debate (mainly among specialists and academics) about the role that social networks, and Facebook in particular, had played during the campaigns.

But it was only at the beginning of 2018, after some journalistic investigations and some "whistleblowers" had revealed the background of the affair, that with the outbreak of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a long public debate began on the real impact that social networks can have on society and democratic processes.

Without going too much into the technical details of the affair, what the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed was the possibility of creating 'personal profiles' by studying the data of millions of users held by social networks, on the basis of which hyper-personalised messages could be created with a very high capacity to influence voters' choices and behaviour.

This discovery opened the classic 'Pandora's Box' of the potential consequences of malicious use of data and its ability to influence democratic processes.

The squirrel: from relevance to conditioning risks

Underlying these processes is a principle dear to large technology platforms and companies: relevance.

That is, the attempt to provide users with what is most 'relevant' to them, often anticipating their online movements.

Over time, however, with the refinement of technical tools and their application to persuasion processes, the suggestion of 'relevant' content has turned into the 'suggestion' of behaviour, if not actual conditioning.

And to explain what the concept of 'relevance' means to data giants, we turn once again to the founder of Facebook, who is credited with the phrase "A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa".

It is the principle of relevance that inspires Amazon's advertising 'suggestions', the display priorities of Google's search results, or even the posts that Facebook prioritises for each user and, quite often, the content we see on a newspaper's homepage or the position of individual articles within it. In short, it is the principle that drives much, if not all, of people's online experience. It is therefore crucial for large web companies to know what is most 'relevant' to their users, or more precisely, what is relevant to each of their individual users, who, let us not forget, number in the billions.

To do this, it is necessary to have information and tools to 'classify' each individual user, to have (to use the terms already used for Cambridge Analytica) a 'personalised profile' of each individual user of Amazon, of Facebook, of Google, of Apple, of Microsoft, etc. etc. A personalised profile of each of us, internet users.

To understand the sophistication and personalisation of the suggestions that different digital channels can make, it is useful to understand how well they 'know us'. To this end, research conducted by the University of Cambridge in 2015 (which, of course, has nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica) showed that Facebook can build a psychological profile of its users based on 'likes'.

The box shows the number of likes required for Facebook to know its users better than the people closest to them.

How many “Like” Facebook needs you to use, to make it knows you better than:

• 70 likes. FB knows you better than a fried or a room-mate;

• 150 likes. FB knows you better than a member of your family or a close relative;

• 300 likes. FB knows you better than your partner.

Source: University of Cambridge - The Psychometrics Centre – 2015 The test used is available at www.applymagicsauce.com

Considering that in 2016 the big data broking companies (according to the documentary 'The great hack' edited by Netflix) had between 2,000 and 5,000 data points for each US voter, it is easy to imagine how deep the knowledge these companies have about individual voters.

And therefore the power to influence their decisions with tools, messages and suggestions, targeted 'ad personam'.

From data harvesting to potential manipulation

Although the data we have seen above refers to the US 'market', where the legal protection of privacy is weaker than in Europe, especially after the GDPR came into force, the techniques for collecting, analysing and classifying user data have been further refined in recent years. It is therefore not unlikely that a similar scenario exists in Europe, also due to the widespread neglect of privacy protection by the public.

In order to be able to have such a large amount of data on each voter/user, large communications companies and those that have 'data broking' in their corporate mission use different technical tools. In fact, there are companies whose main mission is precisely to broker, analyse and sell data on Internet users.

Through various tools, software and small pieces of software code embedded in the websites we visit or in the apps we use on our smartphones, thousands of pieces of information are collected at every moment of our online lives, allowing profiles to be created that can later be used to target us with advertising, information and tailored communications.

If we limit our discussion here to political communication, which certainly has the most direct impact on democratic processes and the civil rights of European citizens, we can see the risks associated with a deep knowledge of people's personalities: the risk of being exposed to 'hyper-personalised' communication, with individualised messages no longer aimed at large social groups (e.g. 'workers vs. businessmen' or 'suburbs vs. inner cities'), but targeted at individual citizens on the basis of their precise characteristics, history, behaviours and even dreams.

A textbook example of these risks was seen during the Brexit campaign in 2016, which saw a large number of personalised messages (often spreading false or misleading information) linked to the specific interests of small, but very specific, target groups of voters.

A 'film tax' has never been discussed, nor even proposed by European institutions at any level.

However, such a hypothetical proposal was clearly an issue of great concern to those who use film streaming platforms, thus mobilising them to vote for Brexit or, if they wanted to vote Remain, to reconsider their idea.

Similarly, a highly emotive message aimed at the large segment of the British population with origins and relatives in Commonwealth countries suggested that with Brexit, all citizens of these countries would be able to obtain a British passport. It was an obviously false claim, so much so that Indian or Canadian citizens would not automatically obtain British citizenship after Brexit.

From personalisation to polarisation, a short and risky step

The same algorithmic processes that enable the creation of 'hyperpersonalised' advertising are behind all the processes of content selection that are displayed to internet users in different contexts. As mentioned above, these algorithms now select which posts are displayed on social networks, which links are displayed first in Google search results, and often even which news items, or in which order, are reported on the front pages of online newspapers.

Such a personalisation of online content has given rise to the phenomenon of "filter bubbles", i.e. the tendency for the user him/herself to be placed in a "communication bubble" that filters

content for him/her, thus providing a distorted image of the world that appears less diverse and rich than it actually is.

It goes without saying that there is a natural tendency for people to choose topics of their own interest. Nobody reads a 'noir' book if they are not interested in the genre and nobody sees a 'tear-jerker' film if they do not like that kind of story. But these are precisely individual and conscious 'choices' between different contents.

The 'Filter bubles' that are created on the Internet, which are created by algorithms, determine in fact not a choice, but an impossibility of choice, because the reality and the contents presented to users are univocal, without giving space to or in any case restricting the diversity of the world, in all its possible meanings: artistic, cultural, religious, political, etc.

This phenomenon, together with that of the so-called "echo chambers", could have serious consequences not only in cyberspace but also in the real world, with worrying polarisation phenomena.

In such echo chambers, the natural human tendency to seek confirmation of one's beliefs and positions is exacerbated. Obviously, it is easy to fall into a vicious circle when your own filter bubble exposes you to the same kind of personalised news that does nothing more than endlessly reproduce a world similar to our own.

Indeed, the combined effect of filter bubbles and echo chambers triggers a vicious circle of constant confirmation and reinforcement of one's own beliefs and, consequently, rejection of those of others. A perverse mechanism that can only lead to cultural and behavioural polarisation.

When this applies to social relationships, to human relationships based on strong opinions (e.g. religious beliefs or political positions), it risks polarising debate and ultimately people's behaviour.

A phenomenon in which the United States is once again in the vanguard (in this case a negative vanguard), as evidenced by so many studies showing the growing and increasingly violent cultural and political polarisation of which the events of January 2021 were perhaps a natural progression, but not yet an epilogue out of the virtual world.

Social networks: quantity vs quality. Not all that glisten is gold

Since the big 'social' platforms lost their 'network of friends' dimension to become 'social media' about 15 years ago, with the explosion of the phenomenon of so-called 'influencers' with millions of followers and views, large numbers have been the dominant element in assessing the success of communication.

Today, it is widely reported that a large majority of the European population of all ages uses social networks, although there are large differences in the way they are used by different age groups. For example, Facebook and WhatsApp, both owned by the same American company, Meta, are now used by the majority of the European population, according to Eurostat data for 2020.

Among younger people in the EU aged 16-24, almost 9 out of 10 (87%) participated in social networking sites. This ranged from 79% in Italy to 97% in Denmark.

Among older people aged 65-74, more than a fifth (22%) participated in social networks. This ranged from 10% in Croatia to 60% in Denmark.

It is no coincidence that the success of the messages disseminated by both political figures and show business stars is measured in thousands or millions of views, comments, shares and, above all, likes. An evaluation that is purely numerical and has nothing to do with the quality and content of the messages.

An example of Facebook's deep social penetration is given by the number of registered users in the city of Palermo, Italy: more than half the total of the entire resident population (of all ages, from newborns to the over 100s).

It is indeed clear that in view of these figures and this level of penetration of digital media and platforms, it is nowadays impossible to ignore their existence and use when thinking about organising social activities, campaigns, movements and forms of democratic participation.

In view of the limitations mentioned above (risks to privacy, quality over message, etc.), it is therefore useful to take stock of digital and online tools for promoting active citizenship, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

2 Digital tools for participation: which, when, how

General considerations

In the following pages we will present some of the most popular tools for participation and participation promotion that are available online or otherwise related to the digital world.

For each of them, we will present what we consider to be their advantages and disadvantages, bearing in mind that there is a relevant similarity between the digital world and the real/analogic world.

There is no perfect tool and that each organisation will have to assess which tool or tools to use according to its own objectives, resources and the context in which it operates.

Elements to

consider

when choosing digital participation tools

• Cost-effectiveness analysis

As we have seen, some of the tools available online, for example, are based on massive use of people's data, bordering on invasion of privacy, over and above formal compliance with laws and regulations, which are often lacking. At the same time, everyone, whether an individual or an organisation, should always assess whether the tools they intend to use are ethically compatible (or at least not in conflict) with their own values and mission, as well as with the specific objectives of the individual active citizenship initiative.

Of course, an assessment based on financial costs and cost-effectiveness is also essential.

• Analysis of the specific target group(s) to be addressed.

Understanding and assessing the culture and resources of the group to which a campaign or action is addressed is an essential element for a successful outcome. Do the people I want to reach with a digital tool have easy access to the internet? Do they have the necessary digital and technical skills to use the tools I want to work with?

At the same time, it is essential to assess the cultural aspects of communication in order to avoid messages that, although inspired by the best

of intentions, may in some way be offensive or misunderstood by the recipients or even potential beneficiaries.

• Analysis of the objectives of the campaign

Is it important to win, to persuade or to participate?

Any social communication campaign that aims to encourage active participation may have different objectives, and the messages and tools need to be calibrated accordingly. For example, a campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues will certainly have a different style, tone and tools than a campaign against corruption in government.

• Budget and human resources

It is, of course, essential to carefully assess your available budget, time and human resources. Obviously, an awareness-raising or political lobbying activity with a low budget and few human resources will have to rely much more on digital tools and know how to use them in the most effective and engaging way.

• Time assessment

In addition to requiring larger budgets, active citizenship activities and campaigns based on analogue tools and methods tend to take longer to achieve their goals. Therefore, even in this case, where the need is more concentrated in time, the use of digital tools is essential, but requires the ability to communicate effectively.

• Slacktivism vs activism. Digital vs Democracy?

All digital participation tools have one element in common, which can be both positive and negative, but which certainly risks having a negative impact on 'traditional' democratic processes, starting with participation in electoral processes. This is the socalled 'slacktivism', a neologism derived from the words 'slack' and 'activism'.

In its positive sense, it refers to the possibility of mobilising those who normally tend not to participate in public life; in its negative sense, it refers to the fact that with a simple click or the virtual signing of a petition, people think they have fulfilled duties and rights as active and participating citizens.

It follows, and the worrying data on the ever-decreasing active participation in elections in all countries of the world seem to confirm this, that many consider the ever-increasing "supposed digital participation" to be one of the elements that actually reduce the real participation that happens, or should happen, in elections, which is capable of determining the choices and directions of society.

Digital tools for active participation: some examples

Petitioning

Pros

• Easy to use, free, fast

• perfect example of slacktivism, can therefore mobilise people who do not normally participate in civic activities.

Cons

• Privacy issues (you need to check the platform's privacy policy carefully to make sure they are not selling subscribers' data and profiling them 1), effectiveness (if the other side is not ready to listen, a petition has no chance of succeeding) and...

• perfect example of slacktivism, in the sense that those who sign the petition are not really involved nor do they want to be. Their signature is neither an act nor an indication of civic mobilisation.

Social challenges

Pros

• Easy to use

• potentially free of charge

• potential involvement of VIPs

• potentiality of getting viral.

Cons

• Requires investment in publicity

• risk of misuse/understanding (e.g. in relation to culture or gender)

Not applicable to the petition system of the European Parliament

• potential conflict with specific social situations (i.e. “you waste water when I'm dying of thirst”)

• slacktivism (but less so than petitions) and…

• …in times of conspiracy theories, risk of being labelled a 'satanic ritual'

Crowdfunding

Pros

• Raise money

• low or no commission

• potentiality to go viral (less so than challenges)

• even if they do not raise money, give visibility

• require accountability.

Cons

• May require technical skills

• require investment in advertising

• success of action depends more on communication than on objective

• need to pay attention to the ethics of the platform used

• require accountability

Use of social networks

Pros

• Cheap or free

• no technical skills at a basic level

• in use by a quite large percentage of the population

• allow you to target a specific audience.

Cons

• May require technical skills for advanced use

• encourage slacktivism vs. activism

• enable targeting (promote polarisation)

• require caution and skills for reposting and sharing

3 European tools for citizens’s participation

Citizen Participation

as in the Founding Documents of the European Union

Active participation of citizens in social and political life is one of the pillars on which the European Union is founded. It has included rights and instruments for the active exercise of such participation in its founding documents, such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Treaty on European Union. European Institutions created specific online tools to facilitate the implementation of such specific rights of citizens.

In particular, beside obvious reference to the exercise of voting rights at different geographical levels, several articles of the Charter explicitly refer to the protection of rights and freedoms related to the exercise of active participation in democratic life, and Article 44 introduced the possibility of petitioning the European Parliament on matters within its competence.

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union Article 44 - Right to petition – “Any citizen of the Union and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State has the right to petition the European Parliament.”

Petitions allows the Parliament, through the Petitions Committee, to implement an ongoing reality on the way in which EU legislation is implemented and measure the extent to which the EU institutions are responding to citizens’ concerns. The objective of the Petitions Committee is to provide a response to all petitions and, when possible, to provide a non-judicial remedy to legitimate concerns on issues related to the EU fields of activity. Petitions can be presented in paper or can be activated directly on the European Parliament web portal. 2

www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions

Articles 10 and 11 of the Treaty, on the other hand, deal with the exercise of the right of participation and, in particular, article 11 introduced the ECIEuropean Citizens' Initiative, which allows European citizens (at least one million, residing in a "significant" number of Member States) to submit legislative proposals to the Commission on matters of major interest.

Treaty on European Union Article 11

“1. The institutions shall, by appropriate means, give citizens and representative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action.

2. The institutions shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society.

3. The European Commission shall carry out broad consultations with parties concerned in order to ensure that the Union's actions are coherent and transparent.

4. Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties. The procedures and conditions required for such a citizens' initiative shall be determined in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.”

A group of at least 7 european citizens from 7 different countries is entitled to start the procedure to bring foreward an ECI and start the collection of signatures.

To facilitate the process, the European Commission itself set up an online portal that makes the signature collection more easy and reachable the goal. 3

https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative

The Conference on the Future of Europe: example of offline and online participation combination

The Conference on the Future of Europe, which started its activities in June 2021 and is expected to finish next spring, represents a rather rare case in the international institutional landscape of a combined online-offline citizen participation process for the elaboration of development strategies and the identification of political priorities.

As far as the content of this publication is concerned, it is important to highlight the role played by the online digital multilingual participation platform 4, through which tens of thousands of citizens were given the opportunity to make and comment on proposals, to participate in discussion forums and to produce summary documents that were submitted to the Conference Presidency itself.

This was possible thanks to the combined use of state-of-the-art technical tools and, it must be acknowledged, the foresight and open-mindedness of the organisers.

From a technical point of view, two elements were crucial to the success of the online platform: https://futureu.europa.eu

• the use of open and participatory software such as "Decidim", already used by several non-profit organisations and municipalities around the world to promote participatory democratic processes;

• the use of artificial intelligence systems to automatically translate all proposals and comments into all EU languages. This has made it possible to break down language barriers between participants in the debate, making participation by all truly concrete and possible.

Decidim is a Free Open-Source participatory democracy platform for cities and organizations. But Decidim is more than a digital platform: it’s a common’s free and open project and infrastructure involving code, documentation, design, training courses, a legal framework, collaborative interfaces, user and facilitation communities, and a common vision.

Decidim is a platform for citizen participation made by the people and for people. Its source code is open and can be inspected, modified, and enhanced by anyone. The Decidim software is covered by the AGPL license. That means that you can use it, modify it and redistribute derived versions of it as long as you respect the AGPL license.

www.decidim.org