Insights from Romania’s Reaction to Coronavirus Infodemic. Towards an Educational Approach

Gabriela Grosseck; Laura Malita

doi:10.18662/lumenss/9.1/38

Authors

Gabriela Grosseck West University of Timisoara
Laura Malita West University of Timisoara

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18662/lumenss/9.1/38

Keywords:

disinformation, infodemic, media literacy

Abstract

At the end of 2019 the world has encountered a merciless enemy: the COVID-19 virus. In less than two months, the World Health Organization declared this phenomenon as a pandemic one and people started to become more and more preoccupied by the coronavirus related subjects. Consequently, an enormous spread of related online content has become available, especially through social media – the so called “infodemic”. A period of fears and incertitude, the Coronavirus crisis raised indisputable the importance of media literacy. Thus, throughout this paper we start by exploring the worldwide pandemic context and its related infodemic content and how the European Commission and the Romanian government reacted and responded accordingly. By highlighting concrete measures on how to tackle and avoid such content we draw an educational radiography of the infodemic context on both national and international level, pointing out to concrete examples as well as advices on how to deal with such Coronavirus related online content.

Author Biographies

Gabriela Grosseck, West University of Timisoara

Gabriela Grosseck is associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the West University of Timisoara, Romania. She has particular expertise in ICT in education (teaching, learning and researching), a solid experience in students’/teachers’ training both f2f and online environments. For almost a decade she was an editor-in-chief of Romanian Journal of Social Informatics. An author of many articles in the field of e-learning 2.0, a speaker at different international events, workshop organizer and member of editorial committees (journals and conferences), European or national projects coordinator, her research interests cover main aspects of digital and media literacy, open education (OERs/OEPs and MOOCs), Web 2.0 tools and technologies in higher education, collaborative aspects and proper use of social media (by teachers, students, researchers, policy makers and other educational actors) and digital storytelling.

She is also a full member of Intercultural Institute of Timisoara (IIT) for more than a decade. She has been actively involved in several projects as a researcher of IIT on using ICT, social media and web 2.0 tools on themes as: intercultural education, minorities, migrants, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, intolerance, education for democratic citizenship etc. She was actively involved in the project Migrant.ro, whose main goal is to enhance consultation and civic participation of migrants in Romania. Due to her educational background (BA and MA in educational sciences), and her passion about Education for Sustainable Development, she became member of GreenUVT Working Group of WUT, whose aim is to establish the university Education for Sustainability Strategy. Moreover, she introduced since academic year 2018-2019 in the curricula of 3^rd year Pedagogy (BA) the “Education for Sustainable Development” discipline, whom she teaches since 2018. She also has experience as module leader, academic coordinator or teacher in different Erasmus+, Jean-Monnet Action included.

Laura Malita, West University of Timisoara

Laura Maliţa graduated Informatics (BA) and Sociology of the Political and Administrative Institutions (MA). She has a PhD in Web Sociology, being continuously involved in projects and activities with topics related to web social learning, web social aspects and users’ behaviour, online communications, media and digital literacy. She was benefited of a European Integration scholarship on the topics of social integration. She is certified as a Trainer of Trainers. Since 2000 she is continuously involved as member or coordinator in more than 20 international projects. She is an academic teacher since 2000. She has also experience as Erasmus teaching professor in different EU HE institutions like Open University of Cyprus, Essen Social Science University, Scotland University etc. For 2019-2022 period, Laura Malita is the module leader of Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Module, DIGI4EU: Improving students' digital literacy, digital competences, digital intelligence and digital citizenship in European contexts (611623-EPP-1-2019-1-RO-EPPJMO-MODULE). She was a teacher for European Master of Adult Education (7 universities and countries). At WUT she teaches about using social media applications in learning and professional development process, digital media for personal and professional purposes, professionalization of teachers regarding such topics. She is the coordinator of the first BA academic programme “Digital media”. She was visiting professor at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia and at Beijing Normal University on the topics regarding digital media.

Her recent research and publishing interests are covering subjects as digital media and literacy, critical media literacy (incl. fake news and disinformation about climate change and other sustainability issues), open, distance and virtual learning, learning analytics for decreasing student’s drop-out and increasing their employability and sustainability literacy.

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