(1) Background: Realfooders have positioned themselves in social networks such as Instagram by posting photographs of recipes, advises, habits and nutritional behaviours which are advertised as reliable nutritional patterns and by their self-promotion as highly trained people in the field of nutrition which sometimes jeopardises the health of digital citizenry. (2) Methods: In this article, we develop a quantitative study for analysing the influence of selected Realfooders on 2,866,980 followers on Instagram, taking into account channel variables (gender, location, interests and motivations), followers’ variables (engagement, interaction and consumption) and some variables related to the message of 54 posts about breakfast. (3) Results: Selected Realfooders concentrate their followers in Spain, mostly women between 18 and 24 and between 35 and 44 years old who link their interests on food to the cult of the body and recreational areas. On the other hand, the content generated by Realfooders has been increasing its impact using advertising and marketing techniques for awaking consumer’s interest. (4) Conclusions: Educational and social agents are facing the challenge of low health literacy in young population. Therefore, it is necessary to design and implement strategies for developing critical thinking that allow them to assess the content generated by Realfooders and identify which recommendations can be harmful or beneficial to their health.

Analyzing the influence of social media on the learning process is no longer a novel idea; however, due to its importance for students and consequently for teachers, research continues to explore the pedagogical potential of social media. The main objective of the present study was to analyze the influence of teacher roles (guide or facilitator) on students’ social participation in Twitter and their perceived academic experience. The sample consisted of 525 future teachers, all of the Master’s degree students at Spain’s National Distance Education University (UNED). We used a mixed triangulation design, a theoretical model, quantitative methods (descriptive analysis and contrast of means) and qualitative methods (content analysis following the principles of grounded theory). Our results showed that the teacher’s role as a facilitator exerted a more positive influence on how students assessed their experience and on their participation on Twitter than the role as a guide. We conclude that the use of social media sites in education offers a motivating and satisfying framework that is not provided by other more traditional means such as forums, and that a role that facilitates independent learning is a better strategy when using social media in the classroom. El análisis de la influencia de las redes sociales en el proceso de aprendizaje ya no es una novedad. Sin embargo, debido a su importancia para el alumnado y en consecuencia para el profesorado, la literatura científica sigue prestando atención al potencial pedagógico de las redes sociales. El objetivo principal de esta investigación fue analizar la influencia del rol del profesorado (guía y facilitador) sobre la participación social en Twitter y la experiencia académica percibida de los estudiantes. La muestra estuvo formada por 525 futuros profesores, estudiantes de posgrado en la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. Se utilizó un diseño mixto de triangulación, un modelo teórico, una parte cuantitativa (análisis descriptivo y contraste sobre medias) y otra cualitativa (análisis de contenido, siguiendo los principios de la teoría fundamentada). Los resultados mostraron que el rol facilitador del profesor influye positivamente en la valoración de la experiencia por parte de los estudiantes y en la participación en Twitter, en mayor medida que el rol guía. Por un lado, se concluye que el uso de las redes sociales, en el ámbito educativo, proporciona un marco motivacional y de satisfacción que no lo aportan otros medios más tradicionales, como los foros, y, por otro, que un rol que facilita un proceso de aprendizaje independiente es mejor estrategia cuando hablamos de redes sociales en el aula.

Background In 2020 Spain launched an official campaign, #EsteVirusLoParamosUnidos, aimed at uniting the entire country through citizen cooperation, in order to combat Covid-19. The objective of this research has been to analyse how this Twitter campaign revealed the feelings expressed by Spanish citizens. Methods The research is based on a composite design that triangulates, from a theoretical model, a quantitative analysis and a qualitative analysis. Results Of the 7,357 tweets in the sample, 72.32% were found to be retweets. Four content families were extracted which relate to politics, education, messages to society and the defence of occupational groups. The feelings expressed ranged from those of unity, admiration and support to those of discontent and criticism of issues regarding the health situation. Conclusions The development of networked socio-political and technical measures, which enabled citizen participation, facilitated the development of new patterns of interaction between national or regional governments and digital citizens. This increased citizens’ possibilities of influencing the public agenda and, therefore, strengthening citizen engagement regarding specific situations.

The main objective of this study was to analyse the influence of social media participation on academic performance. The sample consisted of 1960 students taking one of two courses at undergraduate or postgraduate level, respectively (Faculty of Education, National Distance Education University, Spain), of whom 411 students carried out an activity based on social media participation. We used a mixed quantitative (descriptive analysis and ANOVA) and qualitative (content analysis) design. Our results showed that the students who participated in a social media-based activity presented better academic performance than those who did not carry out any activity or who took part in a more traditional learning activity. We conclude that regardless of educational level, social media participation exerts a positive influence on performance. Consequently, it is important to consider the variable of social networking site use because this can partially explain academic performance. We also found that the networks generated during the course did not constitute stable communities of practice. Our main recommendation is that three stages of instruction should be considered when designing a course based on social media participation: beginners, intermediate, and professional.

The literature shows strong evidence of how different learning models influence learning. The kind of model used is a basic variable that can either help or hinder sustainable education. The objective of this research is to analyse how digital pedagogical models of three kinds (collaborative, social, and independent) influence the learning experience. The study is based on a design that combines triangulation, a theoretical model, quantitative methods (descriptive analysis and contrast of means), and qualitative methods (discourse analysis, following the principles of grounded theory). The importance of social and collaborative models in sustainable education is proved; both types of models promote a positive learning experience. They strengthen inter-student relationships, a feeling of belonging to a community with shared interests, and feelings of membership and cohesion. An independent model may hamper students’ perception of current knowledge and development of collaborative competences, in contrast to the more-interactive model. These results can be assessed in greater depth through future research exploring independent models’ possible potential for analysing environmental problems and their tie-in to personal decisions.

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence that the system of assessment used has on academic performance, taking into account the implementation of an activity based on social networks (Twitter), and the weight of students' perceptions with regard to the improvement of interpersonal relationships and academic progress. The study sample consisted of 519 students studying for a Master's degree in Secondary Education Teacher Training at the National University of Distance Education, Spain (Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia): 332 pursued Option A (continuous assessment of task-based learning) and 187 Option B (evaluation of learning based mainly on examination performance). There were significant differences between the students of Option A and those of Option B. In addition, the students that engaged in the Twitter activity performed better in the exam and in the CAT [Continuous Assessment Test] compared with the students of Option B. It was concluded that a task-based system of continuous assessment and participation in activity on social networks helped to improve academic performance.

The current media eco-system has become more and more polluted by the various avatars of “fake news”. This buzz term has been widely used by academics, experts, teachers and ordinary people, in an attempt to understand and address the phenomenon of information disorder in the new media environment. However, studies have rarely questioned what teachers, key stakeholders in the media literacy field, actually understand by “fake news”, and to what extent the new digital tools available to fact-check are actually viable solutions to fight disinformation actively. In this context, we conducted focus groups (N = 34 people interviewed in 4 focus groups) with teachers in four countries (France, Romania, Spain and Sweden), in order to assess their understanding of “fake news”, as well as their perception of possible measures to combat the phenomenon, with a particular focus on digital tools. The findings show that the understanding of the concept of “fake news” differs from one country to the other, but also within the same country, with a common feature across countries: intention to deceive. Additionally, respondents identified lack of media and information literacy (MIL) in education as a major gap for combatting information disorders. Furthermore, they find that the use of digital tool for professional fact-checking needs to be repurposed or followed by pedagogical instructions to fit into the complexity of educational practices. Our findings highlight possible solutions for MIL in education using a combination of technocognition and transliteracy as theoretical framework and scaffolded pedagogical design for better adoption of fact-checking techniques.

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