This chapter enquires into the resonance of junk news on Twitter during the campaign periods prior to the 2019 Dutch Provincial elections and European Parliamentary elections. Querying Twitter for political topics related to the two elections, and various divisive social issues such as Zwarte Piet and MH17, we analyse the spread and prominence of problematic sources. We also examined the claim that Twitter is susceptible to abuse by bot and troll-like users, and found that troll-like users were active across all political and issue spaces during the Dutch Provincial elections of 2019. Divisive issues remain steadily (even if marginally) active in junk news and tendentious news throughout the tested time frames, suggesting these issues are year-round rather than event-based or seasonal, as they are in the mainstream media.
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The Dutch research project “Wijs met techniek” (Tech-Wise) explores ethics education from a tool-based, practical perspective. Especially if and how practical tools for ethical deliberation on the impact of technology can be helpful in ethics education for engineering students. The approach is first intended as a variation on theories in ethics and technology. Secondly, the approach uses a focus on the impact of technology as a way toward ethical deliberation. Both characteristics are intended to better appeal to engineering students. In the project we cover three levels of higher education: a University, a University of Applied Sciences and a School for Vocational Training. Together we are developing and testing a suite of activating working methods that can be tailored to various engineering programmes. A first result of this is the simple workshop format “ethics for engineers”, consisting of five steps with four effective ingredients. In this paper we present the general format of this workshop and dive in particular into a specific instance of the workshop called “Wonderberries”. The experiences from the workshop show that with a carefully chosen combination of engaging orientation, a specific ‘technology’ and a concrete design exercise the ethical questions and subsequent deliberation and reflection can be very rich.
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