Social Media Responsibility Training Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Media Responsibility Training

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Social media are omnipresent these days. Most youth have smartphones which allow them to use social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others continuously. Social media offer a good opportunity to interact with friends and family and also offer the possibility to get into contact with people from other countries and cultures. However, they also pose many dangers. Openly accessible information can be used in so called “Cybercrimes” such as online scams, identity theft and phishing, to name but a few. Furthermore, especially young people are often victims of online solicitation and extortion, according to Europol. Another issue is so-called “fake-news” fictitious news stories which are spread widely on social media channels as well as hateful or racist statements on social media platforms.

Social media transcend borders and are, therefore, a global topic. The partner organisations have observed that the youth they are working with use social media extensively, yet they often post a lot of personal information and do not understand who can see that information or how other people can use that information. For example, many do not realise that, if they apply for a job, the future employer might look at Facebook profiles and that drunk pictures will not be beneficial then. Also, we have seen many youth being victims of scams because the clicked on links and provided data without checking the source. Similarly, for a lot of the young people in the youth centres in all involved countries, Facebook is the main source of news and information about current political and world events. Although, this in itself is not a bad thing, many news sources on Facebook are not reliable or simply fake which lead to a distorted view on current events. It, therefore, makes sense to tackle the issue transnationally and learn form the experiences and expertise of other countries. It will also help the young people to understand the intercultural and global aspect of social media use.

Yet, the topic is not as present in youth work and non-formal learning as it could be. Many youth workers have no experience on the issue and no training tools to use in order to make youth aware of the issues. Neither is it usually not part of curricula for youth worker training.

The project aims to create a resource for youth workers in order to train young people between 13 and 25 responsible and safe use of social media. Its goal is to show the opportunities social media offer for young people to connect across borders and cultures but at the same time also to show the dangers and how to use social media responsibly. In order to make sure that these tools are tailored to the needs and expectations of the target group, young people will be consulted during the creation of the tool-kit and the methods developed for it will be tested in a youth exchange with young people from all 5 countries. Comprehensive involvement of youth in the project is essential in order to make sure that the training methods and materials developed in this project are closely linked to the needs and expectations of young people.

The first step will be to a state of the art analysis of social media behaviour and resources for dealing with these issues. From this, best practice methods are collected and presented in each organisation. These will be exchanged between partners which will lead to the creation of a training design. In order to test the training design and receive feedback on it, a blended mobility with 6 youth from each partner country will be implemented during which the training will be implemented and tested. With the evaluation feedback from the mobility the training will be adjusted and finalised. The results will be disseminated with multiplier events and on-going dissemination of the project.

The partners involved are:
– Internationaler Bund Berlin-Berlin Brandenburg gGmbH Betrieb Brandenburg Nordost (Germany)
– MAD for Europe (Spain)
– Prios Kompetanse AS (Norway)
– ACTIVEYOUTH ASSOCIATION (Lithuania)
– ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE JUMPIN (Italy)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 182688 Eur

Project Coordinator

INTERNATIONALER BUND-IB BERLIN-BRANDENBURG GGMBH FUR BILDUNG UND SOZIALE DIENSTE (IB BERLIN-BRANDENBURG GGMBH) & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE JUMPIN
• Prios Kompetanse AS
• Asociacija “Aktyvus jaunimas”
• MAD for Europe