No matter if you’re a business or in the public sector, you can’t talk about the digital future without talking about education and research. They are the backbone because they produce the employers and employees of the future. They also produce much of the data, insights and new technologies that is the foundation of new products, services and businesses across all sectors.
So what are they working on inside the walls? What’s the next big thing and how are they changing digital as we know it?
During the American presidential election in 2016, a phenomenon called “fake news” surfaced the media. Donald Trump accused the American press of being ‘fake news’ and Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg admitted after the election that Russian internet trolls in Saint Petersburg with fake accounts and bots had spread “fake news”, especially about Hillary Clinton, on social media. Americans who were unhappy with the newly elected president started to wonder if Donald Trump had been elected if not for fake news.
Social media, fake news, and skewed politics – a whole new ball game for everyone
‘Fake news’ is not just a foreign phenomenon. 36 percent of Danes are “very” or “extremely” worried about what is “true and false on the web in terms of news”, according to Reuters Institute’s latest media report. In 2018, 46 percent of Danes received news from social media.
“On social media, politicians and agencies can tailor their political campaigns towards the individual user very specifically and play on psychological factors that aren’t immediately visible to the general public” explains Anja Bechmann, professor at Media Studies and director of DATALAB at Aarhus University. She is one of the main forces behind SOMA’s (Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis) brand new research center in Aarhus that will be inaugurated May 7 during IWDK2019.
“At the research center, we investigate the logic behind (dis)information spread and collective behaviour on social media. Underneath the whole fake news discussion is an underlying assumption that if we prevent fake news from occurring, our democracy is secured. However, research shows that people share news articles if the article supports their own existing political conviction. And in that case, we need to develop new ways to foster democratic conversations in our societies”, Anja Bechmann argues.
Innovative use of crowdsourcing in education
In the past two decades, crowdsourcing has become a global phenomenon adopted across sectors and economies to source contributions and solutions from the crowd. At VIA University College, Denmark’s largest university of applied science, they are using crowdsourcing to allow students to solve real world problems.
In 2014, they launched VIA Connect, the first crowdsourcing community built by an institution of higher education. And in 2018, they entered into a strategic partnership to co-develop the challenges.dk crowdsourcing platform together with the Danish Business Authority and Realdania.
“Through crowdsourcing, we bring leading brands and organizations together with tomorrow’s talent to create innovation and change,” says Flemming Binderup Gammelgaard, project lead and chief consultant at VIA University College.
