Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society

Can education counter a culture of hate?

Paola Cagliari — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:04:38 +0000

Learning from violence. Hate Literacy as a core competence for contemporary citizenship

Mario Pireddu — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:56:04 +0000

Public debates on hate speech are often framed in terms of regulation, moderation, or prevention, positioning hostile content primarily as a pathological deviation to be removed from digital environments. This article proposes a different perspective, arguing that hate speech can be approached as a critical object of analysis for contemporary citizenship education. Building on the concept of hate literacy, the paper conceptualizes hostile online discourses as pedagogically relevant artifacts that both reflect and actively shape models of citizenship, participation, and belonging. Rather than interpreting online hostility as an automatic outcome of digital technologies, the article situates hate speech within a dynamic interplay between intentional political actors, platform infrastructures, and hegemonic cultural narratives. From this perspective, hate speech functions as a form of informal civic education, contributing to a hidden curriculum through which norms, hierarchies, and exclusions are learned and normalized. The paper outlines hate literacy as a core civic competence, understood as the ability to critically read, contextualize, and deconstruct hostile discourses by examining their discursive, technological, and political dimensions. By reframing violence and hostility as lenses through which power relations and civic subjectivities can be analyzed, the article advances a pedagogical framework that moves beyond moral condemnation toward critical engagement. The contribution concludes by discussing the implications of this approach for citizenship education in platformed societies.

"To redeem horror from his invisibility". Forensic Architecture’s work with images

Maurizio Guerri — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:04:17 +0000

Securitized migration news and hostile audience reactions on Instagram: a computational analysis of Italian news posts and user comments

Sat, 23 May 2026 20:53:53 +0000

Migration has become one of the most contested issues in contemporary European public debate, where news coverage often frames migrants through the language of border control, legality, and public order. Such securitized representations may contribute to keeping migrants at a symbolic distance from audiences, presenting them less as socially embedded individuals and more as categories to be regulated or governed. While previous research has examined media representations of migration and online hate speech separately, less is known about how migration-related news content is associated with the hostile reactions that can emerge among social media audiences exposed to this content.
This study addresses this gap by analyzing migration-related Instagram posts published by eight major Italian news organizations between January 2025 and March 2026, together with the comments they generated. A corpus of 368 news posts and 76,998 user comments was analyzed by combining topic modeling of news posts with automated emotion detection and hate speech classification of user comments to examine how securitized thematic environments are associated with hostile audience responses. The results show that audience reactions were marked by a strong prevalence of negative emotions, with anger emerging as the dominant response across the corpus. This affective profile became more polarized in relation to news posts that framed migration through legal-institutional conflict, return procedures, border enforcement, and NGO-related controversies. In these securitized contexts, audience responses were more strongly concentrated around anger and disgust, and this emotional concentration was accompanied by higher levels of hate speech.

From hate speech to toxicity: depoliticization, algorithmic governance, and the transformation of harm in digital public discourse

Roberto Bortone, Stefano Pasta — Sat, 23 May 2026 21:40:08 +0000

Over the last twenty-five years, hate speech has become a key category in international public policies, while digital environments have increasingly promoted the rise of the broader and more operational category of toxicity. This article argues that the shift from hate speech to toxic content should not be understood as a merely terminological substitution, but as a semantic and governmental transformation in the way discursive harm is identified, measured, and managed. The paper first reconstructs the historical and normative genealogy of hate speech, then examines the psychological, computational, and platform-based genealogy of toxicity, and finally compares the two frameworks through their conceptual, operational, and political implications. Particular attention is paid to the agency of platforms, algorithmic governance, content moderation, and the tension between discriminatory harm and conversational harm. The article suggests that toxicity offers scalability and technical operability, but may also contribute to the depoliticization of online harm if detached from histories of discrimination, protected characteristics, and asymmetries of power.

Poeticising life. Art and art education as forms of resistance and elaboration of the logic of hate

Chiara Panciroli, Pier Cesare Rivoltella — Sun, 24 May 2026 20:59:13 +0000

This article analyses the role of art and art education as practices of poeticising existence capable of countering the logic of hate and violence in contexts marked by alienation, trauma and social disharmony. Drawing on the theoretical contribution of Michèle Petit, in dialogue with Gaston Bachelard's poetics of rêverie and Hartmut Rosa's sociology of resonance, the article interprets hate as an expression of a silent and discordant relationship with the world and with others. In this context, art is taken as a device of resonance, capable of reactivating speech, imagination and the ability to attribute meaning to experience. From a methodological point of view, the research adopts a theoretical-interpretative approach integrated with case studies, identifying and analysing artistic and educational practices operating as forms of prevention, cultural resistance and therapy. The cases discussed — from the pedagogical atelier, artivism and street art, to artistic practices of trauma processing in war contexts — show how art can transform wounded objects, places and materials into symbolic spaces of reconciliation and healing. Importance is given to the role of the artist and art educator as a passeur: a cultural mediator who does not transmit predefined contents but creates the conditions for a symbolic transition towards forms of subjectivation, emancipation and the construction of bonds. The article concludes by arguing that the poeticization of existence today represents a fundamental educational and cultural resource for imagining and practising a culture of peace.

Evolving teacher interests in innovative learning environments: impacts of exposure and implications for professional development

Amelia R Granda-Pinan, Óscar R. Lozano — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:27:51 +0000

Teachers’ practice is increasingly oriented towards designing and working in Innovative Learning Environments (ILE). In-service teachers’ professional development is being designed coherently, sometimes allowing them to experience learning situations in such environments. Two surveys were designed, and validated, to answer to two main questions concerning teachers’ interests and how they evolve once they know ILEs and have this training experience. To get all the information needed, one survey was filled before taking part in the training experience, and the other one after it. 255 answers were received and analyzed to extract several conclusions. Results indicate that teachers, after the training, became increasingly open to embracing more active, participatory methods, integrating more innovative, immersive and interactive technology. They also showed greater interest in how to zone and plan meaningful learning experiences in such environments. Furthermore, the main topics teachers wish to receive further training on relate to designing appropriate learning experiences and selecting suitable methodologies. These findings suggest that engaging teachers in a training experience within an ILE serves as a catalyst for professional development in these topics. The study has implications for both educational administrations and school leaders promoting ILEs.

How can educational videos with annotations help students in online learning environments?

Riad Bourbia, Samia Drici, Yacine Lafifi, Sevinc Gulsecen — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:44:18 +0000

In recent years, many new technologies have been used to enhance the learning outcomes of learners in online learning. Video annotation is one of these new technologies which is an innovative way to make learning more interactive and engaging. It can accommodate different learning styles by turning passive video-watching into an active learning experience. This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an e-Learning platform incorporating a Video Annotated Technique. Learners can pinpoint challenging parts of educational videos and then receive personalised explanations from their teachers. The primary purpose of these annotations is to clarify and provide thorough explanations of complex topics, ultimately improving understanding and making preparation for final examination tests easier. This paper presents a new personalization approach by managing the learners’ annotations. Furthermore, it offers a video annotation tool incorporated into an e-Learning environment. This tool was tested on a sample of students, and the experimental results demonstrated a significant positive impact on learners’ performance.