Programma della conferenza

While a debate is open on whether or not social media are positive for adolescents’ development and education (Marciano & Viswanath, 2023), in Italy, WhatsApp was the most used social media/communication app in 2022, with adolescents presenting the highest use (Statista, 2024). Little is known about what psychological variables affect adolescents’ comprehension of digital messages (Cherbonnier & Michinov, 2022) and especially of emojis, i.e., pictograms delivering emotional cues. Moving from preliminary analyses with a small sample (Bisagno & Cadamuro, 2023), we explored the role of Theory of Mind (ToM) and Social Media Use (SMU) in emoji comprehension.

Three-hundred-and-three adolescents (F=134; Mage=12.37 ± 1.09) completed an online questionnaire including an SMU scale (Beyens et al., 2021), the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), the Real/Pretend Emotions Task (Sidera et al., 2013), and a 35-item emoji comprehension task based on secondary and tertiary emotions (Plutchik, 2003).

The moderation analysis (PROCESS macro by Hayes, 2016; Model 1) revealed that the Eyes test (B=.50, SE=.16, p<.01) and the Real/pretend task (B=.59, SE=.05, p<.001) positively predicted emoji comprehension (R2=.61). The interaction of SMU with both ToM tasks was significant, with stronger relationships for low-to-medium SMU.

ToM has a prominent role in comprehending emojis for adolescents who display low-to-medium SMU. This suggests that youngsters who approach SMU rely on their individual abilities, such as encoding/decoding emotions during typed conversations to interpret digital messages; with time, this task becomes automated. Therefore, ToM training could be relevant to promote the youngest children’ preparatory skills for approaching digital communication.

The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical reflection on the relevance of the construct of “media literacy”. Over the last few decades, it has come to dominate and has become synonymous with “media literacy” and “digital literacy”. We know, however, that it is only a partial synonym, since it expresses only one specific way of understanding media education. Therefore, we will show that current media education is no longer represented by this term, as the words and concepts of both media and media education have changed in the last decade. Finally, we will show how another paradigm, based on the metaphors of the environment and environmental education, can better explain today’s media literacy phenomena than “literacy”.

Two thirds of the world's population are connected to the internet and make use of technological devices and online services on a daily basis. Of the remaining third, there is part of the population that has no access to the internet or technological devices or if they have access, they do not connect and do not make use of these tools correctly and with equal opportunities. In many cases, people with intellectual disabilities are within this third of the population, with negative consequences in many areas of their lives, highlighting the social relations. One of the reasons for this digital disconnection is the lack of competencies and skills to use ICTs correctly and safely in general.

The purpose of the study we present here is to learn about the reality of ICT use by young people and adults with intellectual disabilities and the subsequent proposal, based on the results obtained, of a digital literacy program. A group of 12 young people and adults between 18 and 30 years of age participated. The design used was mixed, through a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The results show the need to provide this group of young people and adults with strategies and a digital literacy program was designed with them, to improve digital participation, risk management and social relationships.

The paper aims to present the qualitative-quantitative results of an action-research training course that involved 30 primary and secondary school teachers from Istituto Comprensivo 2 in Mondovì (Asti) on the topics of digital sources, manipulated images and artificial intelligence. With this activity, the aim was to explore the impact of prebunking techniques, outlined by Ecker, Lewandowsky, Cook et al. (2022), but proposed here in the reformulation outlined by Bruno and Moriggi (2023), so as to allow a meaningful application of this methodological device to support innovative teaching/learning experience. Similar to debunking, this methodology, developed in the psychological field in the terms of an "attitudinal inoculation" (Cook, Lewandowsky and Ecker, 2017), aims to expose learners to different communicative and linguistic modes and logics, allowing them to gain direct experience of the most widespread and effective narratives of the unreliable. The ultimate goal is to generate an "immunity-effect"-that is, a critical awareness capable of intercepting and decrypting the main deceptive persuasion techniques and constellations of unfounded beliefs. The experimental training, after a plenary session, was structured into three 3 immersive workshop meetings, each dedicated to one of the three thematic areas specified above. A pre-training and a (similar) post-training questionnaire focused on knowledge and skills related to the thematic areas addressed were administered to participants and also to a control group not involved in the course in order to measure the impact of the training intervention.