Abstract:

Social Risk in education such as bullying, are usually invisible to teachers and parents, at all educational levels. However, these risks remain a reality everywhere in the world, turning into a problem that is rapidly globalizing due to the widespread access to the Internet. The Internet has permeated our entire society and is now present in almost every activity. The education and most aspects associated with it, such as Social Risks, are not exempt of this new form of communication within our society. This has led to a significant increase in damage Social Risks can exhort on the victims, due to several causes such as their capacity for dissemination, repetition and virality; greater anonymity of aggressors and the chance for more people joining them; continuity over time even when after school hours; display of intimacy before an endless crowd of people; ease of permanent control through geolocation, control of online statuses and connections; and even the risk of easily impersonating a victim. The first step to prevent these issues is to carry out a study on the current state of Social Risks. An updated snapshot would allow to draw up action plans based on reliable data and develop countermeasures to minimize the damage caused by current Social Risks to minors. The objective of this work was to conduct a study on unsolicited data obtained from Social Media on three of the most prominent Social Risks of our society, namely Bullying, Addictions and Xenophobia within the field of education, with the aim of obtaining an updated snapshot of their current status. The study was carried out during the second semester of 2017 and the first semester of 2018, the presence and emotion of said risks in Social Media. For this study, we gathered communications freely available and shared online in forums, social networks and webs used by students to express their opinion, by means of public APIs and web scrappers. Then this information was classified using neural networks for semantic analysis in order to discern which communications were about any topic related to Bullying, Addictions or Xenophobia. After determining the most relevant terms, as well as the most used communication channels a statistical analysis was performed on each of these groups. Our findings show that, when people express freely about social risks without being asked, the views expressed online differ significantly from those of official communication channels and mainstream news media.

Keywords:

Social Risks, Education Challenges, Bullying, Addictions, Xenophobia, Social Media.