Digital information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery and assessment of information, its understanding and the critical evaluation of the sources.
The relevance of the subject is confirmed by “key competence for life-long learning” (2006-2018) when the digital competence is outlined as “the ability to search, collect and process information and use it in a critical and systematic way, assessing relevance and distinguishing the real from the virtual while recognising the links.”
Information literacy is directly related to the individual’s employability, to get employed and to stay in employment or to move on in the workplace (Cedefop 2018). PIAAC indicates that 20 to 25 % of European adults aged 16 to 65 with low levels of proficiency in digital information literacy face higher risk of unemployment and social exclusion (2016/C 484/01).
A cross-cutting need in the digital labour market is to close the digital gender gap. In the EU fewer than one in five ICT professionals are female (Women in the digital Age; EC 2018).
The criticalities heavily affect also the democratic participation of European citizens as digital literacy is totally related to the capacity to spot disinformation. The Flash Eurobarometer 464 stresses the low trust in news published on online social networks (19%), the high perception of running into online misrepresenting information (68%) and a discouraging 83% of respondents identifies fake news as a problem for democracy in general.
Fakespotting responds to the needs by implementing innovative digital literacy tools, bringing meanwhile a renewal in Higher Eduation and Adult education fields. As recommended into “Renewed EU agenda for higher education” Higher Education plays a unique role in tackling skills mismatches to prepare students for jobs where shortages exist or are emerging.
Digital literacy brings with it an extraordinary enhancement in HE teaching, pedagogy and education delivering as stressed by “Transforming Higher Education” (WG 2017) “Digital Education Action Plan” and “Improving and modernising education” that inspired Fakespotting project.
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