Conference Agenda

In recent decades, the levels of political engagement of EU youth have declined (Kitanova, 2020). Norris (2003) suggests that this apathy is caused by the youth’s significant disillusionment with the political system. While there are various means by which people can express their political and social views to advocate for desired change (Norris, 2003), the choice of these means depends on their perceived success rate concerning the desired outcome (Šerek et al., 2012). In the vast majority of European countries, young people can’t vote until the age of 18, and while their political representation is nominal, they need to rely on older generations to represent their interests, which can be overlooked (Vochocová & Rosenfeldová, 2023).

However, studies indicate that young individuals may embrace unconventional or novel means of involvement in the socio-political sphere (Ross, 2021; Šerek et al., 2012). This study explores the transformative potential and challenges of youth activism, specifically online activism, as a way of exhibiting democratic mindsets and attitudes as envisioned in Dewey’s conceptualization of democracy (Hytten, 2016).

Activism can be understood as a wide array of actions instigated to promote political causes, environmental protection, human rights, or anti-war efforts (Klar & Kasser, 2009). Furthermore, students representing Generation Z are the first to grow up in an era of universal internet access and widespread use of social networking sites, such as Instagram, X, and Facebook. These platforms have become their space of everyday activity and where they learn about and engage with various socio-political issues (Bakker & Vreese, C. H. 2011; Vromen et al., 2015; Jakubowski, 2021). Therefore, social media, where visual images possess inherent political implications and play a central role in negotiating, consolidating, and naturalizing major cultural narratives and social norms (Melek & Müyesseroğlu, 2023), have the potential to counteract the decreasing engagement of youth in political activities (Hobbs, 2016).

While offline civic engagement can place limitations on young people due to resource constraints or parental and school restrictions, the online environment emerges as a space where they can participate actively and independently through a myriad of activities, including expressing opinions, engaging in discussions, sharing information, and mobilizing for collective action (Machackova & Šerek, 2017). This could be seen with the worldwide rise of youth environmental engagement, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the recent Free Palestine protests. In Poland, social media was used for communication, networking, and mobilization of Polish women against the proposed total ban on abortion in 2016 (Korolczuk, 2016). This form of social action has also been adopted by young Polish climate activists from the ‘Wschod’ organization and, most recently, campaigns organized by young Polish activists to encourage youth participation in the 2023 parliamentary elections.

However, researchers express concerns about the external efficiency of online civic participation, the presence of misleading or false information, and the actions of groups disseminating extremist attitudes (Machackova & Šerek, 2017). Moreover, Jakubowski (2021) observes that online personalities often project their preconceived views onto their audiences, a tendency that may primarily apply to young individuals seeking opinions rather than information. Therefore, it is important to better understand the potential and the challenges of this new form of democratic participation from the perspective of its young users.

This proposal is rooted in the ongoing multimethod research project STUDACT, with a particular focus on the Polish case study. It aims to understand how Polish youth utilize social media to gain knowledge, comprehend, and engage with local, national, and global issues. How do they understand activism and online activism? How do they perceive their individual roles and their potential influence on local and global matters through active and reactive online activism?

Theoretical framework and research questions

Over the last decades, technology users gathered in interaction creating a digital society, which emerged due to intense digital connections. In this designated context, the concept of digital citizenship is referring broadly to norms of appropriate, responsible behaviour regarding technology use, particularly in engaging in social and civic activities (Ribble & Bailey, 2007). Due to being raised in a digital society that has provided new opportunities for education, social interaction, and even employment, students were considered digital natives who hold all technology-related knowledge and skills, including digital citizenship. However, digital citizenship is a complex construct which needs to be addressed. Recent studies show that an individual’s extent of experience using the Internet is not a factor that affects the level of knowledge and practice of digital citizenship among undergraduate students. One of the aspects that are being developed in civic education in the era of digital citizenship is civic literacy (Al-Abdullatif et. al., 2020). Several empirical studies on digital citizenship in higher education have been conducted in recent years (e.g., Al-Zahrani, 2015; Kara, 2018); nevertheless, coherent digital citizenship education in the university curriculum is most probably seen as a ‘natural’ outcome of efforts invested in developing students’ digital competences and, thus, is rather neglected in policy papers and programme contents. Given the profound changes undertaken by universities for better preparing students for future societies, it is reasonable to assume that digital citizenship will further enrich the meaning of digital competence development and fully enter the academic debate on transversal competences in higher education. While education programmes in this area are focused more on increasing students’ digital skills, public concern regarding the potential risks to youth online has prompted a quick response to provide internet safety education. This process is more than a mean to an end, hence the building blocks of developing digital citizenship must be clarified to develop sustainable programmes that support digital citizenship development. Also, there is evidence that young people’s online behaviour depends on their own narratives, stories, and experiences of digital life (Black et al., 2022). Nonetheless, the most compacted results show that personal values, such as self-transcendence and security, have a vital role in influencing digital citizen participation (Palacin et al., 2021). Deeper understanding of personal values influence on digital citizenship could provide direction or create incentive mechanisms and grasp user experiences in digital communities (Palacin et al., 2021). Moreover, other studies showed that social factors such as identity (Mitchell, 2016) and social status (Wang & Xing, 2018) impacts youth digital citizenship.

This present study aims to identify and analyze the explanatory factors of digital citizenship, as perceived by university students in different European cultural contexts. Four dimensions were followed in exploring the potential determinants of digital citizenship: digital experiences (Internet Political Activism, Technical Skills, Critical Perspective, and Networking Agency), cultural orientations, individual and social identity, and civic attitude. Therefore, the questions we sought to answer are: What are the individual digital experiences that underlie digital citizenship? What are the values that support digital citizenship? What are the effects of social identity and social status? To what extent cross-national variations can be observed?

The proposed paper delves into the realm of uncertainty in two ways. First, uncertainty, by the means of education (Biesta 2014) and human action (Arendt 1958), refers to the lack of complete knowledge or predictability when making decisions. It encompasses various forms of ambiguity, doubt, and unpredictability that can significantly impact human thinking and action (Mazzone & Elgammal 2019). Second, by focusing on complex machine interactions, our research seeks to illuminate the ways in which humans engage with AI systems in order to approach the complexity of the underlying digital infrastructure (Williamson et al. 2023) and its implications for images and imaginaries of complex machine systems.

In our research, we are exploring contexts and practices that inhabit moments of uncertainty when humans interact with complex machine systems in various playful and creative ways. We do not want to completely eliminate the potential of human uncertainty by focussing on machine systems, we rather try to acknowledge the notion of everlasting indeterminacy in human machine interaction. Therefore, we take uncertainty as starting point to reconstruct images of AI on the one hand and ultimately shape the conditions and constraints of educational processes on the other hand.

Therefore, we want to outline the extent to which people need to be prepared for explanations and know about interaction, in order to benefit from them in a mode of explanation. By addressing the triangle of uncertainty, creativity and exploration, we also hope to get insights to which extent creative methods and visual cues can be leveraged to teach AI concepts and foster digital literacy among learners. The research can be divided into three parts (exploration, creativity and uncertainty) that equally contribute to the overall question: how to address uncertainty in order to enhance human modes of understanding, images and imaginaries of complex machine systems?