Fighting Disinformation: Students Unite Against Digital Manipulation
AI, digital platforms and online manipulation are profoundly reshaping political communication and democratic debate in Europe. Thanks to CIVICA SEF (Student Engagement Fund) funding, students of Politeia Bocconi Students and Bocconi Students for Diplomacy & International Cooperation (BOSDIC) have joined with the European Union Society at SGH Warsaw School of Economics in a joint initiative, the Information Wars: Disinformation and Manipulation in the 21st Century project, with the aim of also involving students from other CIVICA member universities, to explore how disinformation spreads online and how it can be addressed through policy and civic engagement.
“Students from Warsaw reached out to us and we embraced the project straight away. Disinformation is such a critical issue in this age, even more so now with the ongoing wars,” says Sebastiano Savoretti of the BOSDIC association. “Our objective is to help students, and others, find their bearings in this continuously changing digital reality. We want to inform and raise awareness about disinformation in the news and on social media – explain how digital propaganda works and how to defend against it.”
The first result of the project was the organization at the end of March in Warsaw of a series of workshops with the participation of 20 students from Bocconi and SGH. “We discussed about articles and videos generated by AI, how to spot manipulation, how it can be addressed with regulation such as Digital Services Act, and how to defend digital democracy,” says Sebastiano, “It was such an added value to discuss this with other students, sharing diverse perspectives, and to feel close with other Europeans and see that the European spirit is alive. It gave us great energy to now prepare for our big follow-up conference in May.”
On May 6-7 in fact the students will organize a conference in Milan with journalists, researchers, and policymakers to explore, amongst others, how to defend from digital propaganda, how journalism has changed with AI and fake news and the best practices for fact-checking.
The associations involved have also set up a joint Instagram account to update on the activities and share interviews on the topics being explored: @thedisinfobrief
The CIVICA SEF fund is a mini-grant funding scheme aimed at supporting student-led joint initiatives - such as student competitions, conferences, workshops, hackathons, and more - within the CIVICA alliance, to foster cross-campus collaboration among students and student associations in tackling the important issues facing Europe today.