UNESCO Clearinghouse on GCED

User Empowerment through Media and Information Literacy Responses to the Evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Year of publication: 2024 Author: Divina Frau-Meigs Corporate author: UNESCO Key messages Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI are having a significant impact on people’s engagement with information, digital technology, and media. This raises concerns about control human agency and autonomy over information, decision making, gender equality, and freedoms in general. User empowerment through Media and Information Literacy (MIL) as a response to GAI, which is still in its infancy, needs to be fully deployed and public policy makers should be concerned in developing it well from the outset. MIL is necessary to build people’s ethical use of synthetic media, i.e. video, text, image or voice content fully or partially generated by AI-systems. The societal opportunities being deepened by GAI include: access to information, participation, employability, creativity, lifelong learning and creative industries. The societal potential risks being deepened by GAI include: disinformation, loss of data privacy, threats to integrity of elections, surveillance, lack of source reliability, discrimination, including gender-based and racial stereotypes, and copyrights violations. Building on familiarity in the face of urgency, AI literacy can be embedded in MIL to teach and train all sorts of communities (educators, librarians, youth workers, women networks, etc.). Ensuring explainable AI is key to both the design of MIL curricula and to the design of policy and governance around GAI. To build trust in information and education, source reliability needs to be revised to encompass the different types of “evidence” provided by GAI. MIL can train informed people from outside the technology industry to participate in the design, implementation and regulation of AI, in a manner that remains human-centered, gender-responsive and mindful of the public interest. Training for MIL is within the remit of governments and institutions of higher education, which have a duty to ensure MIL policy actions are sustained and strengthened over time, to be future-proof, in the face of an ever-evolving AI/GAI.

Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media: Mapping the Research Year of publication: 2017 Author: Séraphin Alava | Divina Frau-Meigs | Ghayda Hassan Corporate author: UNESCO Does social media lead vulnerable individuals to resort to violence? Many people believe it does. And they respond with online censorship, surveillance and counter-speech. But what do we really know about the Internet as a cause, and what do we know about the impact of these reactions? All over the world, governments and Internet companies are making decisions on the basis of assumptions about the causes and remedies to violent attacks. The challenge is to have analysis and responses firmly grounded. The need is for a policy that is constructed on the basis of facts and evidence, and not founded on hunches or driven by panic and fearmongering. It is in this context that UNESCO has commissioned the study titled Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media: Mapping the Research. This work provides a global mapping of research (mainly during 2012-16) about the assumed roles played by social media in violent radicalization processes, especially when they affect youth and women. The research responds to the belief that the Internet at large is an active vector for violent radicalization that facilitates the proliferation of violent extremist ideologies.

Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media: Mapping the Research Year of publication: 2017 Author: Séraphin Alava | Divina Frau-Meigs | Ghayda Hassan Corporate author: UNESCO | Information for All Programme (IFAP) Does social media lead vulnerable individuals to resort to violence? Many people believe it does. And they respond with online censorship, surveillance and counter-speech. But what do we really know about the Internet as a cause, and what do we know about the impact of these reactions? All over the world, governments and Internet companies are making decisions on the basis of assumptions about the causes and remedies to violent attacks.The challenge is to have analysis and responses firmly grounded. The need is for a policy that is constructed on the basis of facts and evidence, and not founded on hunches – or driven by panic and fearmongering.It is in this context that UNESCO has commissioned the study titled Youth and Violent Extremism on Social Media – Mapping the Research. This work provides a global mapping of research (mainly during 2012-16) about the assumed roles played by social media in violent radicalization processes, especially when they affect youth and women. The research responds to the belief that the Internet at large is an active vector for violent radicalization that facilitates the proliferation of violent extremist ideologies.Indeed, much research shows that protagonists are indeed heavily spread throughout the Internet. There is a growing body of knowledge about how terrorists use cyberspace. Less clear, however, is the impact of this use, and even more opaque is the extent to which counter measures are helping to promote peaceful alternatives. While Internet may play a facilitating role, it is not established that there is a causative link between it and radicalization towards extremism, violent radicalization, or the commission of actual acts of extremist violence.

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