Critical thinking of young citizens towards news headlines in Chile

 Matthieu Vernier, Valdivia (Chile)

 Luis Cárcamo, Valdivia (Chile)

 Eliana Scheihing, Valdivia (Chile)

https://doi.org/10.3916/C54-2018-10

Keywords

Critical citizenship, critical thinking, media education, social mobilization, educational software, technology innovation, collective intelligence, textual analysis

Abstract

Strengthening critical thinking abilities of citizens in the face of news published on the web represents a key challenge for education. Young citizens appear to be vulnerable in the face of poor quality news or those containing nonexplicit ideologies. In the field of data science, computational and statistical techniques have been developed to automatically collect and characterize online news media in real time. Nevertheless, there is still not a lot of interdisciplinary research on how to design data exploration platforms supporting an educational process of critical citizenship. This article explores this opportunity through a case study analyzing critical thinking ability of students when facing news dealing with the social mobilization “No+APF”. From data collected through 4 online exercises conducted by 75 secondary school students, 55 university students and 25 communication specialists, we investigate to what extent young citizens are able to classify news headlines and ideological orientation of news media outlets. We also question the influence of the media’s brand name and the subjectivity of each participant in regards to the social mobilization “No+APF”. The results underline the importance of group work, the influence of the brand name and the correlation between criticalthinking abilities and having a defined opinion.

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Fundref

Este artículo se realizó en el marco de un estudio subvencionado por el Fondecyt n° 1150545 “Redes Sociales y Medios de Comunicación: Modelo de análisis basado en minería de datos para la comprensión del ecosistema informativo chileno en Internet y la educomunicación ciudadana en la Red”. Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT). Ministerio de Educación de Chile.

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Technical information

Received: 28-02-2017

Revised: 03-04-2017

Accepted: 28-07-2017

OnlineFirst: 15-11-2017

Publication date: 01-01-2018

Article revision time: 34 days | Average time revision issue 54: 44 days

Article acceptance time: 150 days | Average time of acceptance issue 54: 97 days

Preprint editing time: 262 days | Average editing time preprint issue 54: 210 days

Article editing time: 307 days | Average editing time issue 54: 255 days

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