The Citizen Science Hub of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, in cooperation with the Data and Web Science Laboratory of AUTH (DataLab) co-organized with the Directorates of primary education in Pella, Eastern Thessaloniki, Western Thessaloniki, Western Attica, and with the Directorates of secondary education in Pella, Eastern Thessaloniki, Western Thessaloniki through the Heads of School Activities, Health Education and Cultural Affairs, a webinar on: “faCT or faKE? Disinformation in digital social networks”.
The seminar took place online on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at the Department of Informatics of the AUTh in Kalamaria (Eth. Antistaseos 16, Kalamaria 551 33) and via Zoom link. It was exclusively addressed to teachers who participated in the first phase of the event but it was also open to university students upon registration. The purpose of this event was to produce guidelines for detecting disinformation content in digital social networks through the collaboration of university students, teachers of primary and secondary education, and researchers of the AUTh Citizen Science Hub.
The university’s researchers together with citizen scientists worked on the topic of gender equality on Twitter and explored how Datalab’s tools analyze the online discourse and help users identify bot accounts and inauthentic behaviour. The keynote of the webinar was Prof. Athena Vakali, founding member of the Citizen Science Hub of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Professor of the Informatics Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Director of the Data and Web Science Lab (DataLab).
The first phase of the event was completed with great success, leaving very positive comments and impressions. The teachers immediately recognized the importance of the problem of misinformation in digital social networks and showed a strong interest and willingness to actively participate in addressing the problem. Briefly, the online webinar included the precise definition of the problem, its consequences for society, and the presentation of digital tools developed by the Data and Web Science Lab (DataLab) that could help identify and analyze the problem.
The Citizen Science Hub of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki has as its primary goal to produce research for and with the citizens through continuous collaboration to produce results. Thus, theseminar aimed at the collaborative development and production of research between the researchers of the Citizen Science Hub of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the teachers of the above DIPE regarding disinformation in digital social networks. In more detail, the purpose of the event was to create guidelines with information for identifying and characterizing disinformation content in digital social networks. Potentially, these guidelines could be incorporated, as supplementary material, into classrooms.
