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The goal of the present work is to analyze the use of social networks as a tool for social empowerment by Spanish university students, and their perception of the university as an institution that contributes to the formation of a critical and active citizenship, that provides them with the relevant digital competences. The literature review shows possible discrepancies regarding the effect of new forms of digital communication in empowering young people, specially university students, as well as the existence of issues related to clarify this digital stage. Following, a typological analysis of the perception of university students regarding social information networks, social empowerment and the role of the university is presented. Using the data collected through a structured questionnaire of a sample of 236 students of social science degrees, an analysis of typologies is performed with the algorithm K Medias. Three clusters significantly different –labeled as «total sceptics», «dual moderates» and «pro-digitals»– are identified. Its prevalence and its characterization are explained: belief and behaviour profiles related to these beliefs. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future research regarding the perception of the students about the use of social networks as a tool for social transformation and the role of the university in this area.

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Strengthening critical thinking abilities of citizens in the face of news published on the web represents a key challenge for education. Young citizens appear to be vulnerable in the face of poor quality news or those containing nonexplicit ideologies. In the field of data science, computational and statistical techniques have been developed to automatically collect and characterize online news media in real time. Nevertheless, there is still not a lot of interdisciplinary research on how to design data exploration platforms supporting an educational process of critical citizenship. This article explores this opportunity through a case study analyzing critical thinking ability of students when facing news dealing with the social mobilization “No+APF”. From data collected through 4 online exercises conducted by 75 secondary school students, 55 university students and 25 communication specialists, we investigate to what extent young citizens are able to classify news headlines and ideological orientation of news media outlets. We also question the influence of the media’s brand name and the subjectivity of each participant in regards to the social mobilization “No+APF”. The results underline the importance of group work, the influence of the brand name and the correlation between criticalthinking abilities and having a defined opinion.

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The relationship between signs and human action is one of the most widely studied theories in art and communications. Humans are constantly producing new discourse and new discursive devices and the issue of the relationship between signs / action not only remains open, but is branching off and forming hybrids with other matters. This work explores one of its branches. We performed theoretical research on the foundations of video artivism, with the aim of achieving a conceptual definition. Firstly, the purpose of the study is defined and the historical background and basic sources of influence described in order to trace a map of its fields of application in teaching practices and empirical research. The results therefore come from a bibliographic review of academic as well as artistic and activist sources, which were based on sections of the differentiating features they respectively recognize and self-recognize as artivist. Six identified features are described: the intervention function, the hybrid code, against domination, disruption, disavowal and subversion, which are aimed at establishing processes, procedures, subjects and the specific forms in which artivism has an impact on society. The article also refers to selected cases as a conceptual sample of the theoretical assumptions made and to describe their capacity of transformation.

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