RAIN.BOW Raise Against Intolerance. New Bridges On The Web. State of art of social and civic competences and values awareness. Bulgaria

As nationalism and xenophobia are increasing in Europe, the RAIN.BOW project aims to promote social inclusion and positive European values through the introduction of non-formal education and methods into the school education. This report is based on the results of two inquiries to secondary-level teachers and students from 12 to 19 years that have been carried out between May and September 2020 in Bulgaria, as well as in France, Italy, Romania and Spain. Those inquiries aimed at studying among others: the awareness of the characteristics of the media processes, the needs of methodological support and teaching materials, the knowledge and competences on civic education, and knowledge on the connection between civic awareness and hate speech and intolerance of teachers; and the perception on prejudices, tolerance, civic competences, social media and the needs for material of students. The report also includes an analysis of non-formal methodologies and tools applicable for training on civic education, media literacy and critical thinking in secondary level schools.

Respondents who took part in the RAINBOW inquiry recognise that all topics listed in Q1 of the teachers’ questionnaire are covered in the process of civic education in Bulgarian schools. Those with the least coverage are topics related to: - political life (37,3%); - denounciation of hateful content (47,1%) - online citizenship - support causes, sign petitions... (51%) - fake news (52,9%) Although the percentages seem pretty high even for the least covered topics, we should mention that the prevailing part of the teachers who took part in the RAINBOW inquiry work in schools which had adopted cloud technologies and successfully use them for teaching and school administrative processes in the last 3 – 4 years. This inevitably brings to the fore topics pertaining to online citizenship, fake news, cyberbullying, etc. More than 58% of the respondents among teachers think that social media facilitates the spread of fake news and violent content. Among all inquired indicators, the highest negative connection is seen between social networks and: - Dissemination of conspiratorial content and false information (very much 70%); - Harassment (very much 67%); - Hate speech (very much 65%); - Violent content and Shocking content (very much 63%). Teachers’ opinion regarding students' media literacy for counteracting fake news and online hate speech is quite dispersed over the rating scale, but is predominantly negative. Just about 12% of the respondents gave answers in the positive part of the scale meaning – they believe that student's media literacy is sufficient to counteract against fake news and online hate speech. most of the respondents consider that students’ media literacy is not at all or somewhat not sufficient to fight against fake news and online hate speech. Furthermore, in their answers, several respondents pointed out that civic education should cover media literacy in a better way. Most of the respondents in the students group report spending between 2 and 3 hours on social media every day (43,2%) but they show pretty passive patterns of behaviour on social media. Almost 40% of the respondents spend between 3 and 5 hours daily and 19,8% - more than 5 hours per day. Just 6,3% spend less than 1 hour daily on social media. The most popular social media among the student-respondents are YouTube (used very often by 76% and often by 19,8%), Instagram (very often – 74,5%) and Messenger (very often – 63%, often – 29,2%). Students and teachers report similar behaviour patterns regarding Twitter, which is equally unpopular in both groups – with 90% of the teachers and 65,6% of the students reporting they never use it. Students‘ and teachers‘ preferences coincide on YouTube and Messenger, but are radically opposed regarding Instagram. Regarding the TikTok application, the student-respondents are divided in half – 50% acknowledge they use it very often (32,8%) or often (17,2%) and the same number of respondents use it rarely (17,7%) or never (32,3%). Most of the respondents who use TikTok are female (ref. Fig. 24). Discord is less popular as a whole with about 20% of respondents admitting they use it very often (13,5%) or often (6,3%). The prevailing part of its users are male. From all social media applications, students declare using Messenger the most to exchange educational content with my friends and classmates and for communication with teachers. TikTok is used mainly for watching videos (55,7%) and spending free time (54,7%). Although this application allows creative activities, only about 14% of the respondents use this application to express themselves. In a similar pattern, the use of YouTube is predominantly for watching videos (90,1%) and spending free time (69,7%) and for getting informed (50,5%). The potential of YouTube to support creativity is used by 8,3% of the respondents to express themselves. Among student-respondents 75,5% report they have witnessed violent situations to other people on social media (such as: hate speech, harassment, threats…); 21,4% have been subject of such behavior and 19,8% have never faced violent situations online. When witnessing violent content on social media, 85,4% of the student-respondents admit that they comment and/or share it. A substantial part of the respondents consider that social media facilitate the spread of violent content. Even more definite is the feedback regarding the role of social media for the spread of fake news.