Education in the web 4.0 age. How media education can contribute to active citizenship.

In the contemporary age, it may seem that ambiguities and manipulations preceding the formation of a collective opinion in democratic societies are a recent phenomenon, mostly due to technological innovations. However, it is not so. Although it has become more complicated in the Internet globalized world, the formation of a public opinion has past origins. At the beginning of the XX century the new concept of the “democracy of the spectator” was born: «the art of democracy showed how to build consensus by using modern propaganda techniques» (Lippmann, 1922, p. 62). «Considering the role of media in contemporary so-cieties and politics, we should wonder in what kind of democratic society we would like to live» (Chomsky, 1994, p. 58). Indeed, in a democratic society public opinion is able to actively participate in managing its own interests, and mass media are open and free. Is this our reality? With the introduction of television first (Eco, 2001) and of the new media then (web, social network), what is the possible scenario for the education of citizens? Where is the border between conditioning and freedom of thought and choic-es? What is the role of education in its threefold declination: edu-cation with media, to media and for media (Rivoltella, 2015)? Is it possible to go beyond a vision characterised by the “apocalyptic” versus “integrated” bipolarity (Eco, 2001)? Starting from this the-oretical framework, this article tries to demonstrate how media education, with its most recent orientations (e.g. social network analysis – SNA, sentiment analysis), can foster critical thinking in order to help people manage information overload, check infor-mation sources and be active citizens (Censis, 2016).