A Digital Literacy Public Awareness Campaign of Social Media Impact

The recent shift from a traditional media to a digital media has affected the way people receive news and perceive current events and topics of interest. Although media convergence has altered news dissemination and shifted power in this domain from a top-down to a horizontal pattern, social media stands alone as it has a seemingly hidden power in controlling how people perceive things. This pilot social media campaign, “Yes, we can”, aims to raise awareness of social media’s impact on people and the role of technology in producing misleading content and fake news, thus filling an existing gap in the literature in the Qatari context. The pilot campaign, “yes we can”, was based on a series of YouTube videos which were then shared on social media platforms using the Arabic language with English subtitles. The episodes covered four topics: Filter Bubbles, Crystallization on Social Media Platforms, Social Networking Bots and Fake News, and Digital Solutions and Artificial Intelligence. The first three episodes discussed the impact of social media on people while the last episode addressed some solutions to tackle fake news. The campaign was successful in meeting its objectives as it received positive interaction on the researcher’s social media platforms: 550 followers, 1850 views, 360 likes, 37 shares, 61 saves, and 44 comments. Additionally, a questionnaire was distributed to assess satisfaction and evaluate if the campaign had helped in raising awareness of social media’s impact and the role of technology and algorithms in influencing people views. The findings of this study indicate that people’s awareness of social media’s impact was raised, particularly in terms of the role of algorithms in producing misleading concepts and fake news. They also suggest the important role of social media in educating people and sharing knowledge, which is part of the study’s vision for filling the digital literacy gap.