Core Competencies for Digital-Opinion Forming

Digital literacy refers to the ability to use technology safely, effectively, and responsibly ¹. It includes both technical and non-technical skills, such as judging whether a particular website is trustworthy and whether particular information is trustworthy. In short, digital literacy means the ability to form opinions reflectively.

An extremely important competence since we are at least as often online as offline nowadays. It would not even be wrong to say that we are only really offline when we are sleeping. That is why destructive online phenomena such as disinformation, inappropriate and provocative comments (trolling), and automated comment programs (bots) are increasingly influencing our opinion.

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First of all, it is important to better understand the effects of the digital transformation and its phenomena. For the decenter, this means enabling direct interaction with the phenomena. This requires a safer space. Our solution: to demonstrate bots, disinformation, and co. using a social media simulation.

Once the simulation has ended, possible courses of action for recognizing phenomena such as disinformation in everyday life are displayed and strategies for dealing with them are taught. The prototype of a simulation was developed in the fall of 2020 together with the Risk Dialog Foundation and the Digital Skills Team of the Canton of Zurich. The first successful runs, which included a discussion on the proposed E-ID Act referendum, were quickly well received.

Example phenomenon: disinformation. Colloquially, disinformation is also often referred to as fake news - a term that we avoid due to its political dimension. In contrast to misinformation, disinformation is deliberately disseminated false information. The aim is to deceive society, individual groups, or individuals in the interests of political or economic interests.It often appears within social networks as validated messages. They reach many people and spread extremely quickly. The fact that they can also appear in many different and inconspicuous forms makes them a popular tool for anti-democratic initiatives.³

Initial funding for the prototype from the Canton of Zurich was followed by support from E-Government Switzerland, with whose help the project was further developed in terms of technology and content.

We soon realised that the simulation also offered other target groups a great opportunity to impart knowledge in a playful and accessible way. The Gebert Rüf Foundation also saw this and supported the project as part of the Digital Education Pioneers. Together with teachers, the simulation was specially adapted for young people in school classes and carried out nationwide.

In a second promotion, the focus is currently on reaching more teachers and making them independent of the project team via Teach the Teacher. In particular, there is a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer, through increased adaptive capacity of the simulation, networking of teachers and free access to teaching materials.

Younger age groups tend to show higher competency scores than older ones ². This finding of the Politools study on media literacy in Switzerland provides important clues for the question of the direction of media education, since contrary to popular belief, it is not primarily the youngest groups that show the greatest competence deficits. This prompted us to move on to another target group. Together with the Christoph Merian Foundation, we are currently carrying out targeted simulations with the "baby boomer" generation.

As a final development, the content and delivery were adapted to the specific needs of employees in the corporate world with the financial support of the Mercator Foundation. Positive feedback from the numerous implementations with Globus, Swica, Mobiliar and many others shows that there is also a need for this type of learning content here.

All of these efforts over the past three years have led to one of the longest projects in the history of the center to date.

And we're not finished yet. We hope that next year we will be able to further develop our simulation for use in socioculture for the National Action Plan against Racism.

With a runtime of three years so far, the project has been able to claim many scaling opportunities and consequently a sense of achievement: Over 70 implementations at more than 40 organisations and schools in 12 different cantons paint the picture of an impact that is as diverse as it is far-reaching.

According to surveys conducted at our workshops for companies, almost 95 percent of the participants stated that the content imparted had been consolidated, a good sign of the effectiveness of sustainable knowledge transfer. Furthermore, participants praised the innovative and practice-oriented simulation and the well-prepared material as well as the sympathetic way in which it was conveyed.

The field of digital competence is constantly developing. This is mainly due to the fact, that digital integration in our everyday lives is constantly evolving. Therefore, the relevance of this topic is undeniable. However, it remains a significant challenge to bridge the gap between older and younger generations in terms of teaching digital literacy. We see great potential here for future projects, especially if they are developed in close cooperation with - or even together with - the target group itself.