IMAGINING WAR WITH AI: AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATIONAL SEMIOTICS

1st International Scientific Conference Education and Artificial Intelligence (EDAI 2024), [pp. 27-42]

AUTHOR(S) / АУТОР(И): Antonio Santangelo, Ilaria Ingrao , Seyedeh Maede Mirsonbol

Download Full Pdf   

DOI: 10.46793/EDAI24.027S

ABSTRACT / САЖЕТАК:

The present study aims to describe how generative AI was used for an educational experiment based on the principles of visual socio-semiotics. In fact, hundreds of images posted on Instagram by Italian and Iranian mass media were collected and stored related to the beginning of the last Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip. We analyzed them using structural semiotics and described their meanings through keywords and short sentences aimed at reproducing the topics and focusing points of the messages they conveyed. The results were presented to young teenagers—Italian and Iranian students— and through a questionnaire asked them to reflect on how the war was represented in their respective cultural contexts. Finally, as the keywords and short sentences used to describe the images were meant at inspiring a certain “prompting attitude”, participants were asked to recur to generative AI to create new images that expressed their own perspectives on the war. Analyzing their reflections on this experience, the conclusion is that visual socio- semiotics and AI can be employed in educational processes to help develop critical awareness of the cultural context they live in, and the positions taken within it. Situated at the crossroads of studies on the relationship between iconicity and the narration of reality, media socio-semiotics, educational semiotics, and critical AI theory, the main research question of our research was: can generative AI be used in education to contrast the spread of ideological narratives, instead of favoring it, as many scholars seem to fear?

KEYWORDS / КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ:

generative AI, educational semiotics, war in Gaza, social media, images, truth

REFERENCES / ЛИТЕРАТУРА:

  • Akita K. and P. Pardeshi, eds (2019). Ideophones, mimetics and expressives (Vol. 16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.01aki
  • Alam S., Hameed A., Madej M. and A. Kobylarek (2024). “Perception and practice of using artificial intelligence in education:         An opinion-based study”.  In        XLinguae, 17 (1),  16-233. http://dx.doi.org/10.18355/XL.2024.17.01.15
  • Anderson, M., Faverio, M., & Gottfried, J. (2023). Teens, social media and technology 2023. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/
  • Ardelean T. K. and E. Veres (2023). “Students’ Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education”. In 10th SWS International Scientific Conferences on SOCIAL SCIENCES – ISCSS. http://dx.doi.org/10.35603/sws.iscss.2023/s08.38
  • Bender E. M., Gebru T., McMillan-Major A. and S. Shmitchell (2021). “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big”. In Association for Computing Machinery. Doi: 10.1145/3442188.3445922.
  • Bozzola, E., Spina, G., Agostiniani, R., Barni, S., Russo, R., Scarpato, E., Di Mauro, A., Di Stefano, A. V., Caruso, C., Corsello, G., & Staiano, A. (2022). The Use of Social Media in Children and Adolescents: Scoping Review on the Potential Risks. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(16), 9960. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19169960
  • Crosthwaite P., Smala S. and F. Spinelli (2024). “Prompting for pedagogy? Australian F-10 teachers’ generative AI prompting use cases”. In The Australian Educational Researcher, 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-024- 00787-0
  • D’Armenio E., Deliège A. and M. G. Dondero (2024). “A semiotic methodology for assessing the compositional effectiveness of generative text-to-image models (Midjourney and DALL• E)”. In European Conference on Computer Vision Workshops: 1st workshop on critical evaluation of generative models and their impact on society. At: MiCO — Milan Convention Centre. https://hdl.handle.net/2268/321378
  • Dixon S. (2013). “Young people, digital media and risk: A problem of polarisation”. In Working with Vulnerable Children, Young People and Families, 167-190.
  • Dondero M.G. (2020). I linguaggi dell’immagine: dalla pittura ai big visual data. Milano: Mimesis.
  • Ferraro G. (2001). Da protesi dell’occhio ad ambiente rituale. Prospettive d’analisi del linguaggio televisivo. Milano: Arcipelago edizioni.
  • Ferraro G. (2012). Fondamenti di teoria sociosemiotica. La visione“ neoclassica“. Roma: Aracne.
  • Ferraro G. and A. Santangelo, eds (2013). Uno sguardo più attento. I dispositivi di senso dei testi cinematografici. Roma: Aracne.
  • Eugeni R. (2014). Analisi semiotica dell’immagine: pittura, illustrazione, fotografia. Milano: EDUCatt-Ente per il diritto allo studio universitario dell’Università Cattolica.
  • Greimas A. J. (1984). “Sémiotique figurative et sémiotique plastique”. In Actes Sémiotiques. Documents (60). Kaplan J. (2024). Generative Artificial Intelligence. What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Kress G. and T. Van Leeuwen (2021) [1996]. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Lacković N. (2020). Inquiry graphics in higher education. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
  • Lacković N. and A. Olteanu (2020). “Rethinking Educational Theory and Practice in Times of Visual Media: Learning as Image-Concept Integration”. In Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(6), 597-612. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1799783
  • Lacković N. and A. Olteanu (2024). Relational and Multimodal Higher Education: Digital, Social and Environmental Perspectives. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
  • Landowski, E. (1988). “Verité et véridiction en droit”, in «Droit et Societé», n. 8, 1988, p. 59
  • Lin Z., Deepak P., Baiqi L., Jiayao L., Xide X., Graham N., Pengchuan Z. and D. Ramanan. (2024. „Evaluating text- to-visual generation with image-to-text generation.“ In European Conference on Computer Vision, 366-384. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72673-6_20
  • Lorusso A. M. (2018). Postverità: Fra reality tv, social media e storytelling. Roma: Laterza.
  • Mengoni A. (2021). “Visual Semiotics”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies, Purgar, K. (ed.), 641-654. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_39
  • Noelle-Neumann E. (1974). “The spiral of silence: a theory of public opinion”. In Journal of communication, 24(2), 43-51.
  • Polidoro P. (2008). Che cos’ è la semiotica visiva. Roma: Carocci.
  • Purba A K, Thomson R M, Henery P M, Pearce A, Henderson M, Katikireddi S V et al. (2023). “Social media use and health risk behaviours in young people: systematic review and meta-analysis”. In BMJ, 383:e073552 doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-073552
  • Said E. W. (1992). The question of Palestine. New York City: Vintage.
  • Santangelo A. (2012a). Le radici della televisione intermediale. Comprendere le trasformazioni del linguaggio della TV. Roma: Aracne.
  • Santangelo A. (2012b). Il gioco delle finte realtà. L’arte di costruire la verità nei mondi di finzione. Piacenza: Vicolo del Pavone.
  • Santangelo, A. (2016). “I regimi di visibilità sui media. Riflessioni sociosemiotiche sui meccanismi della viralità”. LEXIA (25-26), 271-284.
  • Santangelo A., Sissa A. and M. Borghi (2025). Critica di ChatGPT. Milano: Eleuthera. Saussure F. de (1916). Cours de linguistique générale, Genève: Peyot.
  • Semetsky I. (2015). “Edusemiotics and the Language of Images”. In International handbook of semiotics, edit. by Peter P. Trifonas. Cham: Springer, 1169-1183.
  • Semetsky, I. (2020). Semiotic subjectivity in education and counseling: Learning with the unconscious. Routledge.
  • Semetsky I. and A. Stables, eds. (2014). Pedagogy and edusemiotics: Theoretical challenges/practical opportunities (Vol. 62). Cham: Springer.
  • Stables A., Nöth W., Olteanu A., Pesce S. and E. Pikkarainen (2018). Semiotic theory of learning: New perspectives in the philosophy of education. London: Routledge.
  • Strand T. (2013). “Peirce’s Rhetorical Turn: Conceptualizing education as semiosis”. In Educational Philosophy and Theory, 45(7), 789–803. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00837.x
  • Tkacheva L., Flaksman M., Nasledov A., Sedelkina Y. and Y. Lavitskaya (2021). “Iconicity and Second Language Visual Perception: a Psycholinguistic Study of English Imitative Words at Different De-iconization Stages”. In Mathematics, 9(12), 1331. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math9121331
  • Van Dijk, T. A. (1977). “Sentence Topic and Discourse Topic”. In Papers in Slavic philology, 1(1977), 49-61.
  • Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Volli U. (2015). “Dalla censura alla semioetica”. LEXIA (21), 15-34.
  • Yang S., Krause N. M., Bao L., Calice M. N., Newman T. P., Scheufele D. A., Xenos M. A. and D. Brossard (2023). “In AI We Trust: The Interplay of Media Use, Political Ideology, and Trust in Shaping Emerging AI Attitudes”. In Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990231190868
  • Zhao, D., Inaba, M., & Monroy-Hernández, A. (2022). Understanding teenage perceptions and configurations of privacy on instagram. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1-28.
  • Zuboff S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books.