The project

Digital citizenship, defined by the Council of Europe as the capacity to participate responsibly in communities through competent and positive engagement with digital technologies, is becoming an increasingly pressing societal issue as our lives continue to shift online. Two-thirds of citizens expressed a desire for more education and training to enhance their insufficient digital competencies. However, current approaches to digital citizenship education exhibit limitations, particularly regarding the scope of the content conveyed, its operationalization for skills acquisition and its ignorance of the pre-established representations of digital technologies. Given these challenges, one promising avenue resides in the use of audiovisual fiction as a vector for fostering digital citizenship. Indeed, recent studies indicate a clear connection between the consumption of fiction (e.g., science fiction movies) and the digital citizenship aspects beyond coding. Furthermore, the use of fiction in classrooms for other purposes than digital citizenship education has a long tradition of established and operationalized practices, such as design fiction with clear evaluation instruments. Lastly, students arrive in the classroom with already pre-established, and possibly skewed through fictional tropes, representations of digital technologies that need to be accounted for.

Objective

The use of audiovisual fiction for digital citizenship education shows clear promises but also clear limitations. The objective of this research project is thus to critically investigate the integration of fiction to support digital citizenship education. In terms of common theoretical contribution, this project will provide a fiction-based approach for digital citizenship education as well as evidence about how audiovisual fiction changes digital citizenship education in classrooms.

We tackle our objective by formulating three specific research questions:

1. What strategies can effectively support educators in integrating fiction to enhance digital citizenship of students?
2. How can the integration of fiction on the digital citizenship skills of students be systematically evaluated?
3. What are the inherent limitations in using fiction to transmit digital citizenship knowledge?

The team

Our interdisciplinary objective can only be achieved through the collaboration of the four complementary disciplines of our research team:

Educational sciences

Sandrine Biémar, Sophie Vanmeerhaeghe: Educational sciences study the multiple dimensions of learning and teaching in the context of training and education. This discipline will examine students' learning strategies regarding fiction and the digital citizenship skills to be developed. Theories of learning and educational inequalities will be mobilized. The didactization process, in which teachers include fiction in their course, will be analyzed regarding theories of didactics and critical approach to digital technology in education. More precisely, we evaluate the integration of fiction in education via a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning strategies.

Information systems

Anthony Simonofski, Benoît Vanderose: Information Systems (IS) is a field at the crossroad of management sciences and computer sciences as it deals with technologies in use by individuals and organizations. The in-depth understanding of digital technologies from the information systems team will enable to critically analyze fictional representations and their influence on students' perceptions of digital technologies. Moreover, this discipline will enable us to examine how the integration of fiction in the teaching-learning process can be supported through appropriate technological support. Key IS theories will be mobilized, challenged, and extended in this novel context.

Media education

Anne-Sophie Collard, Fanny Barnabé: Media education is a discipline that studies the pedagogical activities and processes involved in developing audiences' critical thinking and media literacy (i.e., their ability to analyze, evaluate or produce mediatized messages), to contribute to a democratized society. Media education mobilizes theoretical frameworks and methodologies borrowed from media studies, educational sciences and critical theory to empower audiences and make them more reflexive in a society over-saturated with media content. These concepts and methods will be used in the project to analyze audiovisual media for themselves (rather than viewing fiction in the classroom as a simple vehicle for conveying content in a neutral way), to resituate learning in connection with students’ broader media practices, and to consider their ability to distance themselves critically from the fiction-based education approach itself.

Cinema

Anne Roekens, Jean-Benoît Gabriel: For the past five years, a transdisciplinary team from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters has established an Advanced Master in film studies1 In addition to courses, seminars, and thesis supervision, this program serves as a research hub for cinema from the perspectives of philosophy, literature, history, and the arts. As part of this project, the cinema master’s team will provide tools and methods to contextualize audiovisual fiction (films in particular) and to analyze audiovisual forms, particularly regarding the relationship between spectators and the credible diegetic world, as well as their implications in terms of representations and the relationship to the world.

It must be noted that the four disciplines showed past collaborations in previous or ongoing projects. The project will be implemented by two PhD Researchers (Nina Demoustier, Lisa Dewulf) with an anchor discipline (information systems or education sciences) but with members from each unit in the supervision committee. 

The team will also benefit from the expertise of Dr. Julie Henry who will join the project as a part-time postdoctoral researcher, under the supervision of Benoit Vanderose. Her expertise in computer science education and digital literacy will be invaluable for assessing computer science knowledge and digital skills, where she will help develop robust assessment methods and deepen understanding. She will also enhance the impact of the project by connecting findings to computer science education, bridging the disciplines of the two PhD students. Her background in design-oriented methodologies and User Experience design will support the development of the fiction-based approach, while her experience with gender issues will benefit the critical reflection on the fictional representations, helping address diversity and inclusion in digital citizenship education and fostering an equitable learning environment.

Di-Fic | A Collaborative Research Action Project (ARC) - September 2025-August 2030

Funded by the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB), ARC projects are Concerted Research Action projects that aim at developing university or inter-university centres of excellence in fundamental research axes and, where possible, that carry out basic and applied research in an integrated manner and aim to make economic and social use of research results. They are awarded based on academic excellence of the applicants, the added value of each research group to achieve goals of research project,  complementary skills of research teams and the methodology of  proposed research program. They typically last for 4 to 5 years. In case of inter-university project, each team is financely supported by its own institution.

More information on the FWB website