Media education through media
production by young people
How can these productions be defined better? The difficult mapping
Cristina Ponte
Seminaire EUROMEDUC
Paris, July 2 2008
Placing
Media Education
and
young producers
in the EU Kids Online Project
EU Kids Online
 A thematic network, lead by Sonia Livingstone (LSE), examining European
research on cultural, contextual and risk issues in children's safe use of
the internet and new media
 Funded by the EC Safer Internet plus Programme (2006-9)
 Network of 21 research teams: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland,
Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands,
United Kingdom
Aims of the network
To compare recent and ongoing empirical research across Europe:
– To identify and evaluate available data on children’s use of online
technologies
– To inform the research agenda, noting gaps in the evidence base
– To compare findings across Europe, contextualising similarities and
differences
– To produce a best practice guide for methodological issues and challenges
– To develop policy recommendations for awareness-raising and media literacy
Versus
Versus
Kids …
National
International
EU ...
Comparative
Access/use
Opportunities
Risks
Regulation
Mediation
Literacy
Safety
Adult society
Under 18
Children
Youth
Parents
Home
Teachers
School
Online …
(mainly) Internet
Mobile
Games, etc
Versus
Offline world
Available
data
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342 research projects
identified, coded and
searchable in our online
repository (NB 235 shown)
Criteria: recent + online +
under 18s + European
Research unevenly
distributed across Europe
countries, as shown
Most are single country
studies; the remainder are
cross-national or panEuropean
Now adding three more
countries and many new
studies
The evidence base and key gaps
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Most research on teenagers, not younger; some on parents, teachers, etc.
Mostly national studies, funded by Governments (though EC funds aid comparisons)
Most is quantitative; less qualitative/ mixed methods (except for young children)
Over half of all research is online; little reaches academic publication
Research on access, use, interests & activities in all countries, but needs updating
Nearly all is on fixed internet, not on mobile, gaming or other platforms
Regarding risk, more research is on content risks (harmful and illegal, hate, etc)
Too little on contact, commercial, suicide, anorexia, drugs, gambling, privacy risks
Little known of parental regulation or of children’s psychological coping with risk
Little research on use and effectiveness of safety strategies (e.g. filtering) or empowering
awareness (e.g. peers mediation; media literacy)
Figure 1: Overview of the structure of the research field
Online activities of children
Age
Access
Gender
Risks and
opportunities
Usage
SES/inequality
Attitudes
and skills
Mediation by parents, teachers and peers
Individual level of analysis
Media
environment
ICT regulation
Public
discourse
Attitudes
and values
Educational
system
Country level of analysis
Research results of the 21 countries
available in September 2008 in the Project website
www.eukidsonline.net
Media literacy,
risks and opportunities
Several activities regarded as opportunities by children
(e.g. social networking, posting personal information,
downloding music, visiting chat rooms) are considered
risks by parents, teachers and other adults.
 How to consider children?
Children’s experiences on online
risks and opportunities
Risks/opportunities/
Role of the child
Content
Child as recipient
Contact
Child as participant
Conduct
Child as actor
Varieties of online risks
Content
Child as recipient
Contact
Child as participant
Conduct
Child as actor
Commercial Aggressive Sexual
Values
Adverts, spam, Violent/
sponsorship,
hateful
personal info
content
Pornographic
or unwelcome
sexual content
Bias, racist,
misleading
info/ ‘advice’
Tracking/
harvesting
personal info
Being bullied,
harassed or
stalked
Meeting
Self-harm,
strangers,
unwelcome
being groomed persuasion
Illegal
downloading,
hacking
Bullying or
harassing
another
Creating and
uploading
porn material
Providing
misleading
info/advice
Varieties of online opportunities
Content
Child as recipient
Contact
Child as participant
Conduct
Child as actor
Education
and learning
Participation Creativity
and civic
engagement
Identity and
social
connection
Educational
resources
Global
information
Diversity of
resources
Advice
(personal, health,
sexual
information)
Contact with
others who share
one’s interests
Exchanges
among interest
groups.
Being invited or
inspired to
participate in
creative
processes
Social
networking,
shared
experiences with
distant others
Self-initiated and
collaborative
forms of learning
and education
Concrete forms
of civic
engagement
User-generated
content creation
Expression of
identity
Risks and opportunities linked
 Research shows the more teens take up online benefits, the more risks they
encounter
– Conversely, safety initiatives to reduce risk tend also reduce opportunities
– Important to balance children’s protection against children’s rights (to
opportunities)
– Like riding a bike, research shows more skill means more, not less, risk
 Parental (and school) regulation difficult to implement and not (yet) shown to
be effective
– Activities seen as risky by adults may be opportunity to teens (make new
friends, share intimacies, push adult boundaries, enjoy risk-taking)
– Blurring especially problematic for ‘vulnerable’ teens (more likely victims
and perpetrators)
…
 Being often more expert than parents and adults, teens play games to
evade parental and other mediation outside their peers
– Teens value their privacy online and seek to protect it (especially from
parents)
– They fear parents becoming more restrictive (and sometimes parents
are the threat)
– Children and teens can be confused e.g. privacy settings, who to
trust, etc.
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Prospects for positive action
Legislation
– Contested, slow to achieve, but then accepted if not always implemented
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– e.g. Grooming, obscenity, race hate
Safety by design
– Structure safety considerations into online space as for towns, roads and parks
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– e.g. Report abuse buttons, defaults, pre-installed filters, warnings, age verification
Awareness-raising
– Among teachers, IT professionals, child welfare specialists, adults, children
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– e.g. Safer Internet Day, media reporting, specific campaigns
Parental regulation
– Safety widely accepted as parental responsibility but unevenly implemented
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– Unclear if restrictions, discussions or other guidance really work
Media literacy
– Growing interest, since treats child as agent and seeks to empower their decisions
– Important to stress critical, analytic and creative skills, as well as self-protection
– But expensive, unevenly implemented, best if integrated with education
…
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Being often more expert than parents and adults, teens play games to evade
parental mediation
– Teens value their privacy online and seek to protect it (especially from
parents)
– They fear parents becoming more restrictive (and sometimes parents are the
threat)
– Children and teens can be confused e.g. privacy settings, who to trust, etc.
Thank you
Sonia Livingstone
Department of Media and Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk
www.eukidsonline.net