Social bots

Students looked into social bots and what they do. Here is the presentation:


This how students reacted:

Thank you for informing  us about social bots. We watched your video and presentation and we understood what social bots are. We had never heard of social bots before and we were surprised to hear about what they can do. We didn't know how they worked and we are amazed that they are in the same social media that we use. - Dorothea

Social bots are robots programmed to do a certain task.We knew about them before. Social bots usually give a like to other people posts, they make fake accounts and follow other profiles (politicians e.t.c). Also,they write texts that can manipulate your decisions. Furthermore,they intergrate in our society and try to act like normal people...however they are not. As a result,they can be very dangerous since they take advantage of and influence our actions but sometimes they can be very usefull. -  Despoina, Iwanna, Pantelhs

We haven't heard about social bots. We are impressed about the fact that bots are in Twitter and Youtube and that they are viewing more and more videos so that they become viral or the fact that they are responding to our tweets. They affect us in many ways. They make us think that some things are in fashion. We are kind of worried about the future with social bots. - Maria, Elena, Alexandros, Kostas

First of all we had never heard anything for social bots before. Social bots impressed us because we had never thought that there could be robots who are programmed to act like real humans behind some accounts. They can affect us in our lives without even knowning because they can see a lot of times one video so it will become viral and other people will see it too out of curiosity. They can also affect oyr opinion by applying posts and they overload the websites so nobody can use them. We are very worried about the future because technology is constantly progressing so there will come a time that we will not know whether we should speak with people on the website or not because we will not know if they are real or they are robots. - Eleni, Vasiliki, Eleni

Honestly, I didn’t know that something like this exists. These days we can hardly imagine a world without social media, but as it is already known, there isn’t always a human on the other side of the screen and it isn’t easy to identify it. It’s disappointing that people use artificial intelligence for making popular accounts on social media. For me it’s too much. I have mixed feelings about the evolution of technology and I am seriously thinking if I still want to use social media, because it will only get worse. I’m against social bots. - Marzena

I’ve heard about social bots before. As far as I know, these are the forms of disruptive intervention in opinion-making processes. They have significant public and political impact. In my opinion, bots and other related influencers can facilitate making a topic appear greater than it actually is. Actually it’s not only social bots which can be dangerous, but also the reaction to them. The fact, for example, that the government would contemplate adopting censorship-like measures is concerning. - Anna

 I haven't heard about social bots before or maybe I just don't remember. Thanks to the presenation I know much more about them and it raised my awareness how technology can be hazardous. In my opinion the technology has gone too far. Robot acting like human is an impressive invention but I think that our world is developed enough and people don't need more advanced gadgets. Instead of making useless robots or artificial intelligence people should save the environment and care about the Earth. The technology can make in the future some vengeance and I think that social medias should only be used by people. - Adam

Nowadays the problem of social bots is one of the fastest-growing in the world of technology. I have heard something about them before but really a little. In my opinion people still don't realise how using a lot of social media be harmful and dangerous. These days we are not sure who we really chatting with on social networks or if sharing any information in the virtual world will be use against us. In my opinion technological development is going in the wrong direction. Everybody should raise awareness about social media and remeber that any kind of robots and artificial intelligence can replace a human. - Wiktoria

Young people and politics

The German students discussed the results of the survey using the worksheet above.

They believe that to be a responsible voter

• you need to have your own opinion
• you should be fair to other voters and keep your vote secret
• you need to be informed about politics
• you should have knowledge about the election you are taking part in
• you need to know about the parties and their aims so that you can choose wisely.

They all do not feel fit for voting. Most of them do not use the internet to find political information because they

• think it's boring
• don't understand
• are not interested.

Sometimes they look at news from their hometown if it's not too complicated and they try to follow the important national news.

They pointed out that you can also find politician on twitter and instagram so you could follow these people. But they personally use social media for private communication to keep in touch with friends.

This drawing reflects what we said:

Polish Survey on Social Media Results

Here are the results of the survey, Polish students carried out among all students of their school and which also comprises the answers of Greek and German students:

Visiting Katowice Regional Parliament in Poland

November the 6th was the day when the Polish group of students visited Katowice Regional Parliament in order to observe a monthly session of the Youth Council. We had an opportunity to participate not only in the Polish part of debate, but also in the English one. Some important matters were discussed by young people, which gave us a feeling that our voice can make a difference. Here you can watch our photos from the debate:

The Hellenic Parliament

Hello from Greece! Our class visited the Hellenic Parliament and Ms Olympia Kroupa, official guide to the Parliament informed us about the history of the building, dating back to the19th century, and its role in politics today. Here's what we found out:

The Greek Parliament

And some photos from our visit:

A Survey by the Greek School on Social Media

Living in a Tech World- A Survey by the Greek School

Our class conducted a survey to find out more about the social media students use. All of the students of A’ class of our school participated (79 students). We were surprised to discover that one of us doesn’t own a smartphone! We have come to think of smartphones as essential tools for our everyday life.

We found out that the majority of students spends 2-4 hours on social media on a daily basis. More than a quarter of the students spend more than 6 hours every day absorbed in their social media. It seems to us that the appeal of social media for young people is intense and sometimes may lead to addiction.

Most of the time spent online by students is devoted to connecting with others on social networks. Students also enjoy watching films and TV series online and some of them enjoy playing online games. Few use the internet to inform themselves about current affairs and to complete their homework.

About 80% of the students stated that their favourite social network is Instagram nowadays. We believe this is so because this is an app that was exclusively designed for smartphones which is the device mostly used by teens to access their social media accounts. Instagram is also a platform that provides a range of options and possibilities.

In the last question of this survey we asked students to answer what problems they believe can arise from the use of all these networks. We were not at all surprised to see that a lot of students believe that the daily use of social media can lead to addiction and we couldn’t agree more. The next most popular answer is personal information theft which is a very serious problem. Next, goes low marks at school and last is misunderstanding between friends.

You can see our survey responses here .

German students on social media

Before going into the topic the German students wrote down their expectations and their thoughts about social media. Enjoy reading about it.

Laetitia

Hey everybody,

my name is Laetitia and I am 17 years old.

Our teacher told us to write a blogpost so lets start ;)

I hope all of us have fun, we know each other better and maybe we won the price J

So what I think so far is, it is a good idea to know, how it is in other schools and what they system is.

Mrs Hansen say, we must think about social media and what I think about it now is, people don’t know the risks , when they send privat pictures or bullied other persons. But social media have a good side, too. You can know other persons, you can text with your friend and see what they do on Snapchat or Instagram. You can also read something about the politics or about your favorite Idol. Everytime you are up to date.

Maybe you know Trump?

He have fans and haters. Maybe more haters because we all know him in other country`s. He write always something about everything, about football, Idols ander other tings he mustn’t think about.

Fahrie

Hello, my name is Fahrie I am 17 years old and live in Germany. I really do love football and music.

This project seems to be very interesting and fun, from this project I expect to meet new people and to discover interesting thinks like; country´s in Poland or in Greece. I am also really excited to work with other students in different country´s and maybe, I can learn English better.

Social media these days now is really famous and everybody likes it and are using it, Social media is really good but on the other hand it can be really bad. I personally don´t use social media because I don´t like it so much. With social media I mean Instagram twitter and snapchat.

What damage is social media for our democracy, for example if Donald Trump posts something bad on his twitter account then everybody can see it and it will be on the News. After just one bad pots it could be very bad for the president of the united states of America.

Hannah

Hello my name is Hannah. I´m 17 years old. My expectation in this project is to find out if social media can influence democracy. Social media has become a big part of our lives. Through social media people all over the world can communicate and interact with each other. Politicians and other famous people use networks like Twitter or Instagram to get close to their fans. Many people have made new friends or found family members through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. For example, Donald Trump uses Twitter to confirm political decisions. Even if social media can be positive in many ways there are still disadvantages of using it. What you once post in the Internet will always be in the internet, that means if you post a picture of yourself or write something about your private life it can be seen in the internet for years. Social media networks save your personal data. I think social media cannot change or improve democracy but it can help change people’s opinion on democracy.      

Adelina

Hi my name is Adelina I´m sixteen years old. I live in Germany. My hobby is play soccer I also like to hear music and go out with my friends.

This project is very interesting here are so many people from all over the world.

My expectations are to meet new people and see what they like do or something else.

Social media is good because you can make new connections you can chat with you friends or send photos where you at or something else.

Social media is very famous example twitter Donald Trump use this and write their everyday something sometimes it´s not good because he posts their some bad things.

Larissa

Hello, my name is Larissa and I am 16 years old and I come from Germany. My expectations about this project is that we become a good group and to make a good project. I hope that we enjoy it and we learn a lot of this project. For me, social media is important because I use it every day and all my chats and Information I get from the internet. Social media is important for the world because everyone can use it and all of us can read stories from the world. Without social media the world   would can’t up to date. Maybe everyone is Interested in the new news from other Countries. For example the exit of England from the EU.

Lena

Hello,

my name is Lena. I am a sixteen-year old girl from Germany. I hope that this project I going to be funny and informative. I want to chat with other students from all over the world. It would be nice to see, how their everyday life is going. So far it has been fun to see their photos and read their profile about their life. It would be very nice to chat with them.

Social Media is very important for us. We can stay in contact with other people (from other countries). You can chat with people you don`t know. You can see other people you don`t know yet. Without Social Media you can`t get information from other countries (like Trump). You can get the weather, when there are traffics or something else. Trump uses the Social Media, because he is reaching the whole world.

In my opinion, we can´t life without Social Media.

Linh

Hello my name is Linh and I am sixteen years old. My expectation about this project is that

we become a good group and I hope also that we have a lot of fun together. My opinion about

social media is that it is very popular for us teenagers, because we mainly write about these

media like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. I also use WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram everyday.

What do I notice about politics and social media? I believe in it immediately Donald Trump and

his Tweets because Donald Trump uses his propaganda via Twitter. I think Trump uses Twitter

because he reaches most people with it.

Alina

I think social media is important in our generation. It’s not possible to imagine life without social media. Using social media all day social media illness becomes real. In the morning the first thing what you do, graping at your phone. Checking your new mails or looking for pretty dresses. The same at the evening. Each day the same. So it is like a routine. I think that the project will be very interesting and i look forward to it.