Following the Digital Revolution, we are witnessing an increase in the number of manipulated sources of information. For this reason, virtual environments can be a breeding ground for the proliferation of prejudices and stereotypes, resulting from the spread of racial fallacious news, known as ‘racial hoaxes’. Adolescents may be more susceptible due to the tense and complicated relationship between their experience with digital platforms and the development of their relatively limited critical thinking. In this landscape, in order to explore the features of disinformation in adolescence, the research involved 41 Italian adolescents between 13 and 16 years old, balanced by gender and school education. The teenagers took part in the focus group discussions on the topic of online information preferences, fake news and racial hoaxes, which were analyzed by means of content analysis. The answers given by participants show a so-called adolescents’ perception of ‘misinformation invulnerability’ that can influence their credulity in fake news, since they are aware of fake news but they are not so able to recognize or remember it.

The spreading of new Coronavirus in addition to becoming a global phenomenon, following the declaration of a pandemic state, has generated excessive access to information, phenomenon named “Infodemia” (Cinelli et al., 2020). The general purpose of the exploratory study is to investigate how the coronavirus situation is described from the journalistic communication. Starting from La Repubblica online, as a reference journalistic magazine, the study assumes that if the circulation of information helps to create a social representation of the phenomenon, the excessive accessibility to sources of information (infodemia) can be modulated by the “how” the phenomenon is described by the journalists. The methodology proposed is quanti-qualitative (mixed method). A Content Analysis (Mayring, 2004) with the SketchEngine software (Thomas, 2016) is carried out first. In support, a Diatextual Analysis (Papapicco & Mininni, 2019) was carried out. The results show the presence of the contrast vision about COVID-19 situation in Italy.

The present study investigates the personal factors underlying online sharing of moral misleading news by observing the interaction between personal values, communication bias, credibility evaluations, and moral emotions. Specifically, we hypothesized that self-transcendence and conservation values may differently influence the sharing of misleading news depending on which moral domain is activated and that these are more likely to be shared when moral emotions and perceived credibility increase. In a sample of 132 participants (65% female), we tested SEMs on misleading news regarding violations in five different moral domains. The results suggest that self-transcendence values hinder online sharing of misleading news, while conservation values promote it; moreover, news written with a less blatantly biased linguistic frame are consistently rated as more credible. Lastly, more credible and emotionally activating news is more likely to be shared online.

Digital games can be defined as games supported by audiovisual apparatus and based on storytelling. This work aims to frame video games in the recent perspective offered by positive psychology and focuses on risk perception and on the promotion of protective behaviors in adolescent students, by means of a new Italian ad hoc created digital game named ‘Scare-away risks’ (Scacciarischi). In its storytelling, the different characters must defeat monsters that symbolically represent potential risks in home, school and work contexts. On this basis, the present study assumes that playing video games, as an engaging and motivating activity, can improve the adolescents’ psychological perception of home, school and work risks. To verify these hypotheses, a quasi-experiment comparing students who played Scacciarischi (experimental group) with a control group was conducted. At the end of the game, a questionnaire was administered to 149 participants, balanced for gender, investigating (a) the level of engagement during the game, (b) the perceived risks, (c) the locus of control, (d) the protective behavior intentions. The results showed that playing Scacciarischi is related to higher levels of engagement, internal locus of control, risk perception and protective behavioral intentions. In addition, both engagement and internal locus of control act as precursors of the other two variables. Finally, reflections about the importance of the engaging experience of Scacciarischi in the domain of safety, prevention and health issues are proposed.

Recent developments in the research field of the tourism sciences show a growing interest in customer satisfaction. Increasingly mediated communications develop new signification practices within social networks, as Twitter, where tourism companies discover what users think of the service offered, through methodologies such as Sentiment Analysis [Pang, B., & Lee, L. (2008). Opinion mining and sentiment analysis. Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval, 2(1–2), 1–135] and digital natives [Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6] produce short textual content regarding the service of tourist companies, as in the case of Trenitalia. From the analysis of sentiment on tweets about Trenitalia, it emerged that Internet users tend to employ ironic devices, difficult to recognize by a software tool. Starting from this limit, the main intent is to examine how social networks offer a new context to the enunciative practice of irony. To detect these aspects, the thinking aloud technique is used, aiming to understand how digital actors re-build signification practices of tourist mobility and to demonstrate how online reputation and customer satisfaction detection systems are not always effective in understanding why users, when they review a tourist service, use veiled communication methods.