12 years ago
The Dilemma of Regulating the Internet
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The internet provides opportunities for creativity and innovation, social connection, and the free flow of information. It also exposes users, particularly children, to harms, e.g., sexual exploitation, racism, cyber bullying and charges of copyright infringement. Thomas Wold published an article in Norway in 2010 entitled "Protection and access: to regulate young people's internet use". Wold wanted to look at people dealing with these dilemmas in actual life, considering not only the “grand ideals of free flow of information and civic participation” (p.64), but also mundane daily life in schools and libraries where practical arrangements for computer access and proper use of computers must be considered. His aim was to examine how the risks might be limited without limiting opportunities at the same time – a balanced approach. I will consider here what is a balanced approach to regulating the internet.
In examining regulation, it is useful to also consider the connections between regulation and other aspects of its use – such as consuming material from the internet (consumption) and producing material to contribute to various sites (production). The “Circuit of Culture” referred to in this blog models these and other interconnections – and argues that only by including other aspects can you consider the whole of a cultural phenomenon (Dezuani, 2010). Regulation and its effect on consumption and production in particular will be considered here.
Wold (2010) conducted a detailed study in Norway, using semi-structured qualitative in-depth interviews with teachers and librarians to obtain his evidence. These teachers and librarians thought of the internet first and foremost as an educational resource, and saw that young people enjoyed using it. Their approach to the undesirable web pages children could be exposed to was to deal with it through dialogue with the children rather than strong restrictions. They saw misleading or false information on the internet presenting a golden opportunity to have students reflect on the validity of the content on hateful pages and aspects of freedom of expression (p.77). They further stated the importance of children being able to play around and find information on sensitive or taboo topics – echoing the rights of children in the UN Convention referred to earlier.
In the UK in 2004 a survey was conducted into experiences of young people using the internet, and their parents, called UK Children Go Online (Livingstone and Bober, 2004). The authors of report of this survey support Wold’s (2010) statement of faith in children’s ability to learn about and deal with harmful material – saying the widespread risks in internet use are in fact experienced by many children as worrying problems they would like to solve. In fact the survey found children perceive a higher incidence of risky, problematic experiences online than do their parents. Even so, the parents themselves favoured a multi-stakeholder approach to regulation – including more education in internet literacy, more and better teaching and guidance in schools. The authors concluded children’s involvement and co-operation in managing, guiding and regulating their internet use is easily sought and effective.
Wold (2010) agrees with this argument of involving children in learning about harmful material, saying dialogue with children is a better way of mediation than strong restrictions. Wold found the biggest challenge for teachers in his study was to teach students to use the computer in a sensible way, with critical awareness. The students were already mostly acquainted with the computer as a source of entertainment but unaccustomed to using it as a tool. They thought teaching critical awareness should include noticing manipulative rhetoric, and being aware of potential dangers of revealing personal information, as well as the obvious exposure to violent, pornographic, hateful and unreliable content. Teachers in his study even saw that students lacking competence to be critical of sources of information was a more important challenge than protecting against harmful content. Others may not give such a high priority to critical awareness – he makes no claims that this is a general attitude, so it may be a high priority only for this particular group.
Another argument against strong regulation of internet use in schools is the promotion of equity and access. Wold (2010) considered access in terms of availability of computers to students as well restricting web pages. His study found that for some children the library was the only place they could access computers. Livingstone and Bober (2004) found in their survey higher internet users have more benefits but also more risks, and lower users less benefits and risks. This supports the argument for increasing access in schools, and providing guidance and education for a higher benefit to harm ratio.
Kapitzke (2009), in an Australian context, supports Wold’s argument that young people need room to push the boundaries of language, sound and image for literacy learning – but sees the regulation which most inhibits this coming from governments. She says present day governments, in spite of their rhetoric to “be creative”, impose an increasingly onerous copyright permission environment, particularly since the signing of the 2004 Australia-US Free Trade Agreement which has preceded increasingly restrictive litigious copyright law. Changes have included moving copyright infringement from the domain of civil law to that of criminal law – so that school children sharing retooled songs online can be classified as criminals (p.3). This analysis of criminal legal classification is not supported by any instances of such charges actually be made against children, at least in Australia – so may be an untested legal change. Kaptizke urges school libraries to resist the temptation to return to the “compliant safe spaces of conformist copyright education practices”.
In conclusion Wold’s article argues for a balanced approach to internet regulation – guiding school students’ use of the internet by paying attention not only to the kinds of websites used, but teaching them how to be critical of content of all sites. Other authors support this approach to provide students with the many benefits of competent internet use.
REFERENCES
Dezuani, M. (2010). CLN647 The ‘Circuit of Culture’ in New Media Contexts: Lecture 6 [Lecture Notes]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_75617_1%26url%3D
Kapitzke, Cushla (2009) Rethinking copyrights for the library through Creative Commons licensing. Library Trends, 58(1). P 95-108 (In Press). Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au
Livingstone, S. & Bober, M. (2004) UK Children Go Online. Retrieved from http://www.children-go-online.net.
Wold, T. (2010). Protection and access: To regulate young people’s internet use. International journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 6, 63-79. doi: 10.1386/macp.6.1.63/1
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