Postverità e datificazione. Nuove conoscenze e nuove consapevolezze dall’educazione civica digitale

The paper addresses digital civic education based on the three dimensions of criticism, ethics and aesthetics of New Media Literacy, a new construct that surpasses the previous “digital school”. In particular, education for digital citizenship is in the paper analyzed as a response to the affirmation of post-truth and datification, typical features of the social Web. This new information regime involves on the one hand the personalization of truth, therefore with a strong role played by emotions and previous personal beliefs; on the other hand, datification remains radically indifferent to meaning: the imperative of data extraction, combined with indifference to content, produces systems that progressively increase the degree of user involvement, without worrying about what this involvement entails. In this perspective, it is noted that the teaching of digital civic education must aim to introduce new knowledge, new alphabets and above all new awareness in educating towards critical thinking and responsibility.