M.07. Learning for Democracy: Media Education and Civic Agency in Times of Disinformation

The rapid platformization of society is transforming democratic life, reshaping how citizens access information, participate in public debate, and construct shared meanings. Algorithmic personalization, opaque curation systems, and attention-driven viral dynamics increasingly mediate civic engagement while weakening traditional mechanisms of deliberation and trust. In this context, disinformation operates not only as false or misleading content but as a structural property of digital ecosystems, exploiting cognitive biases, fueling polarization, and undermining collective capacities to evaluate evidence, negotiate disagreements, and sustain democratic imaginaries. These dynamics pose urgent challenges for educators, institutions, and communities seeking to promote epistemic justice and resilient civic cultures.

Education - across formal, non-formal, and informal settings - remains a critical space for developing the competencies required to navigate polluted information environments. Media education, dialogic pedagogies, and critical inquiry practices can empower learners to interrogate the infrastructures shaping their informational experiences, understand how algorithmic and economic logics influence visibility and truth claims, and resist manipulative narratives that threaten democracy (Cappello & Rizzuto, 2025; Hobbs, 2020; Buckingham, 2020).

This panel invites sociological, pedagogical, political, and interdisciplinary contributions examining how education can strengthen democratic resilience in contexts permeated by disinformation. We welcome empirical studies on citizens’ and students’ information practices, educators’ strategies to counter disinformation, and analyses of platform-governed educational practices, especially in formal education. Theoretical and methodological contributions advancing justice-oriented, participatory, and democracy-enhancing models of educational intervention are also encouraged.