Awards for Digital Humanism

Two research projects of USTP – University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten were honoured with the award “Digital Humanism in Practice” this year. The projects explore aspects of social media and hate speech and offer assistance in everyday life: The project ‘FIVE’ supports young people in dealing with potentially manipulated social media content; the project ‘Counter Speech’ provides adolescents with tools to actively and confidently stand up against hate speech.

The “Practice Award Digital Humanism” is used to honour persons, projects, and organisations for their achievements in this field. The award is supposed to have a role model effect and motivate others to stand up for designing a digital world that is human-centred and responsible.

The two USTP projects received special awards that are bestowed upon initiatives that contribute to implementing digital humanism in practice. These awards are for committed projects addressing societal challenges in the digital space and opening new perspectives for a responsible approach to technology.

“It takes a new, digital humanism – or a new, humanist digitalisation – to break existing barriers, reconcile human goals with the development of digital technologies, and support people in dealing with new technologies. With its research and initiatives, USTP contributes strongly to achieving these objectives. The award for the two research projects shows that we are on the right path. We cordially congratulate our researchers on this success”, say USTP CEOs Johann Haag and Hannes Raffaseder.

Supporting Young People in Navigating Social Media

The project FIVE (#Fitspiration Image VErification) explored the influence of fitness-related social media content on the gender identity, health behaviours, and body perception of adolescents and the resulting consequences. The researchers analysed what makes young people follow the hashtag #fitspiration, and which impact #fitspiration content has on the diet and exercise habits as well as the body perception and gender norms of the target group.

“Together with publishing company Hölzel and gender expert Bettina Prokop, we developed an interdisciplinary blended learning course for upper secondary school that helps teenagers to adopt a better approach to potentially manipulative social media content. At the heart of the course is an interactive image forensics tool that teaches pupils in a playful manner which methods of image manipulation there are and how they can be recognised”, explains project manager Elisabeth Höld, Senior Researcher at USTP’s Institute of Health Sciences.

“The research conducted by Elisabeth Höld and her team demonstrates how important it is to make modern technologies usable for people’s needs. It is at this intersection of chances and risks that we at USTP conduct interdisciplinary research, thus providing important added value for society”, says Christine Haselbacher, Head of the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at USTP.

Counter Speech: Responding Effectively to Hateful Comments

Children and adolescents are often the target of hate posts, cyber bullying, and hurtful comments. In the project “Counter Speech – Young People Against Online Hate”, USTP researchers, together with sociologists of the University of Vienna, developed digital tools to promote counter speech in the online realm. A central outcome is the app “CounterHelp” that helps young people confronted with hate online to take a confident stand against hate speech and to create targeted suggestions for effective and authentic response. CounterHelp was developed in a participatory process together with young people in order to make sure that the app is based on their actual needs and communicative practices.

“CounterHelp demonstrates how generative AI and modern language models can be meaningfully used to support young users of online platforms. We hope that CounterHelp will inspire the development of counter speech assistants for social media platforms”, says project manager Matthias Zeppelzauer from USTP’s Institute of Creative\Media/Technologies.

Group photo of the award ceremony, Copyright: msg Plaut AG APA-Fotoservice Ben Leitner

“With our research projects on modern technologies, we address current topics, co-design new developments, and come up with answers and solutions to social questions and problems related to the use of digital technologies”, states Franz Fidler, Head of the USTP’s Faculty of Engineering and Business.

The project FIVE received funding from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) within the framework of the programme FEMtech. The project Counter Speech was promoted by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF).

Award “Digital Humanism in Practice”

The award “Digital Humanism in Practice” is given away by msg Plaut, ADV – Austrian Digital Value, and the Digital Humanism Association – together with partners such as the ORF, Millstätter Wirtschaftsgespräche, and Springer publishing group.

• Project FIVE
• Project Counter Speech