Advances in new technologies can provide solutions to prevent impairments associated with normal aging, track performance at specific tasks, and provide an entertaining experience to elderly people. Based on these premises we present Eldergames, an EU funded project that aims at creating an interactive tool for preserving cognitive functions impaired by aging and affording sociability. A first prototype has recently been created and its acceptance has been tested on groups of elderly users. The prototype proved able to provide a pleasant social cognitive training because of its simplicity, usability of the interface, and multiplayer architecture.

Disinformation does not always take the form of a fake news item, it also appears in much less evident formats which are subtly filtered into public opinion, thus making its detection more difficult. A method is proposed in this paper to address the study of “widespread” disinformation by combining social science methods with artificial intelligence and text mining. The case study chosen was the expression “right of self-determination” as a generator of disinformation within the context of the Catalan independence process. The main work hypothesis was that the (intentional or unintentional) confusion around the meaning and scope of this right has become widely extended within the population, generating negative emotions which favour social polarisation. The method utilised had three stages: (1) Description of the disinformation elements surrounding the term with the help of experts; (2) Detection of these elements within a corpus of tweets; (3) Identification of the emotions expressed in the corpus. The results show that the disinformation described by experts clearly dominates the conversation about “self-determination” on Twitter and is associated with a highly negative emotional load in which contempt, hatred, and frustration prevail.

Eldergames: videogames for empowering, training and monitoring elderly cognitive capabilities

Because of their specific aging-related needs, older users should be involved when it comes to designing and evaluating devices that target them. While emphasis is usually put only on the accessibility of the final interface to this population, the participatory design and evaluation methods should also be adapted to their needs. This paper aims to contribute to the literature of human-computer interaction for older users by showing---in the context of the development and evaluation of an actual prototype, an interactive television (ITV) for senior citizens within the SeniorChannel project---how design and evaluation methods can be adapted to older users. The paper first describes the strategies that have been reported in human--computer interaction literature to involve older adults in design (i.e., visual prompts, warm-ups, experiencing, hands-on, and natural tasks). It then illustrates the way in which such strategies were implemented in the design and evaluation of SeniorChannel applications (i.e., illustrated material, video clips, tutorials, peer sessions, cards, natural tasks). Finally, the results of the final users' evaluation of the prototypes are reported.

Este artículo explora el fenómeno de la desinformación populista en el espacio online, utilizando como caso de estudio la conversación en Twitter sobre el juicio del Procés. A través de una muestra de 175.977 tuits publicados durante 2019 y de la segmentación de usuarios en categorías, se identificó a los actores principales y se utilizó el análisis de trigramas y de frecuencia de términos para extraer los contenidos más relevantes. Los resultados muestran la gran movilización ciudadana liderada por organizaciones civiles independentistas y movimientos de base popular como el Tsunami Democrátic, frente al papel secundario de partidos políticos y medios de comunicación, así como la adhesión marginal de las instituciones públicas a los hashtags que canalizaron la conversación online. Se comprueba cómo las consignas políticas e ideológicas de independentistas y unionistas definieron la conversación, dejando la discusión sobre cuestiones objetivas de carácter jurídico y político en segundo plano y contribuyendo con ello a la confusión en torno a conceptos como democracia o autodeterminación. Se identifican espacios proclives a la generación y difusión de desinformación populista en dos segmentos de la muestra: la clasificada como población unionista y el sector más radicalizado de la población independentista. El discurso de los primeros es protagonizado por la indignación por los disturbios callejeros posteriores a la sentencia y por la defensa de las actuaciones policiales; el de los segundos, por las llamadas a la desobediencia civil y el enfrentamiento contra el Estado español y contra los propios políticos catalanes. Se detectan fuerzas en el espacio online que son prácticamente invisibles fuera del mundo online, y emerge el concepto de demótica como oposición a la política. Los resultados obtenidos contribuyen a un mejor conocimiento del fenómeno de la desinformación online y su relación con el discurso populista.