Research Projects

DisCoBoard
AI-powered dashboard helping young people identify online disinformation and strengthen media literacy
Start: 01/2025

Disinformation increasingly spreads through social networks and poses a growing challenge, particularly for young people. The research project DisCoBoard develops an AI-powered dashboard that helps students identify and critically assess manipulative online content. By combining explainable AI with a participatory design process, the project creates a practical tool for digital media education in schools.
The research project DisCoBoard develops an AI-supported dashboard that helps students identify and critically reflect on disinformation in social networks. The goal is to combine technological approaches to disinformation analysis with educational concepts of media literacy in order to empower young people to engage with digital information in a critical and informed way.

At the core of the project is an interactive analysis and learning tool that examines online content using methods from natural language processing (NLP) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). The system identifies typical patterns and characteristics of manipulative content and visualizes them in a transparent and understandable way for users. This approach not only enables the classification of misleading content but also helps users understand the mechanisms behind disinformation.

A key element of the project is a participatory development process. Teachers, educational multipliers, and students are actively involved in workshops and co-design activities to identify requirements and develop suitable concepts for a digital learning tool. The resulting prototype will be tested in educational settings and iteratively improved. In addition, guidelines and workshop formats will be developed to support teachers in integrating the dashboard into classroom teaching.

Role of the FZI
The FZI Research Center for Information Technology leads and coordinates the DisCoBoard project. The project is carried out within the House of Participation (HoP) at FZI, which focuses on digital participation, disinformation, and the societal implications of digital technologies.

FZI is responsible for the conceptual design and development of the AI-powered dashboard. This includes the development of methods based on natural language processing (NLP) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to analyze disinformation and the technical implementation of the system. In addition, FZI organizes the participatory development process involving schools, teachers, and students. Through workshops and co-design activities, requirements are identified and prototypes are jointly developed and tested. FZI also conducts scientific evaluations and supports the iterative improvement of the system in educational practice.

Contact person
Department Manager
Division: Information Process Engineering
Branch Office Berlin

Research focus
Digital Society

Drawing on our expertise in applied AI, computational social science, and medical technology, we develop solutions for the political, business, and civil sectors.

Illustration

Funding notice:
The project DisCoBoard is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMBFSFJ) as part of the federal program “Demokratie leben!”. Project partners are kosmos b and the German-American Institute (DAI) Heidelberg.

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