SOCIAL INCLUSION IN A DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

In a relatively short time, information and communication technology has spread worldwide not only in business world like production and services but also in most social sectors and private life. In this regard, for example, research has underlined the potential and effectiveness for social media, mobile phones, and the Internet in general, to improve social inclusion and social participation practices for vulnerable social groups that are often fooled by inaccurate or manipulative posts they see online, because they were never taught how to fact-check, or how to discern "fake news". The paper presents the primary results of two ongoing exchange of good practices ERASMUS+ projects that intend to support inclusive education and digital skills, improving the competences in digital social inclusion of social educators and social volunteers. The two structured questionnaires passed to adults and youth people gives a better analysis of the Internet preferences regarding searching for information, communication with the environment and using Information and Communication Technology in the informal and non-formal education. Therefore, what communication channels are selected and what are the preferences associated with the use of mobile applications in the dynamically changing reality. The changes taking place in 2019-2020 in the above areas will also be analysed. The research was carried out, in each case, December 2019 -January 2020. To conduct the survey, the Google forms tool was used to create an online questionnaire and then by providing a hyperlink to the target groups to conduct the online survey. The results available through Google sheets have been transferred to Statistica 13 from StatSoft, Inc. The questionnaire used closed single choice questions as well as hierarchy questions. Data analysis methods (descriptive statistics) and quantitative techniques were used for data analysis. To verify the hypothesis that the two qualitative characteristics of the population are independent X-2 test was used comparing the frequency of observed frequencies from those expected.