Abstract

The background of this paper is rooted in two societal conditions. Firstly, terrorism or extreme ideological messages and threats are constantly changing their shape and character. Secondly, various Internet-based mediation channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and other chat rooms, are used to express extreme ideological ideas and manifestos – a kind of «virtual terrorism.» Therefore, politicians and educational leaders, schools and teachers must work to promote digital awakening, i.e. promoting an awareness of such processes in order to develop a critical competence which can uncover and reveal the message conveyed through the social media. The question is whether such a digital awakening can be achieved through traditional media teaching and methods for text and image analysis. In this paper we argue, by way of the educational [Pädagogische] theory of Bollnow, and the philosophy of education of Hegel and Kierkegaard, that education needs to go beyond such methods, as they prevent students from being able to catch up with terrorism’s constantly changing faces. We argue that digital awakening is both a continuous and a discontinuous process which creates challenges for practical pedagogy. Teaching based on predefined answers is probably not the solution. More use, that is, educational use of images in teaching can, so we argue, be a fruitful way to go.