Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic has propagated the manifestation of negative phenomena in communication (e.g., conflicts of ideas, fake news, misinformation, hate speech, cyberbullying, etc.) and the degradation of social dialogue at local, regional, national, and international levels. It has proved the digital capabilities of the higher education sector as insufficient to react adequately to these phenomena and also, to those like attack on scientific thinking, bullying over digital media and a distortion of the public discourse through conspiracy narratives, fake news and hate speech, etc. Thus, the level of digital media literacy must change behaviours, together with the update of communications and ethics competences in the higher education institutions and communities.
The article scope is to provide a framework of action for university staff and students to recognize the phenomena, to be aware of their manifestation and impact. In addition, there will be suggested methods and tools for an adequate behavior to addresses the topics of democracy and inclusive democratic participation, media literacy and tackling disinformation and the prevention of bullying in the context of implementing the RespectNET project (“Respectful Communication through Media Education Network”, Erasmus +, KA2 Strategic Partnership project, 2021-1-IT02-KA220-HED-000027578, https://respectnet.eu/).
The aim of the presented research is to provide a reliable resource for planning and prioritizing training for critical media and communication competences of university members and civil society activists. Activities defining in the the research approach were established to reconcile traditional training (create added value for trainees) on media competence and communication with the new forms of destructive communication, disinformation, bullying, and hate speech that have spilt over from general society to universities. The target groups (of the future training programme) are training designers and responsible people in universities (e.g., teaching and research staff, marketing, and ethics responsible persons), civil society, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The research process consists of a desktop research, a collection of good practices, a series of focus groups research, and a survey based on a questionnaire. Thus, the matrix of competences (4x4 shape) design evolved going through several stages of investigations and consultant activities. As a result, four fields of competences have been identified as needed to be targeted by the RespectNET training program, as following: (1) critical media competences, (2) science communication; (3) democracy competence; (4) actual communication challenges.

Keywords:

Matrix of competences, descriptors, media literature, communication, democracy, dialogue, civil society, university, RespectNET project.