Alexandra Vasile's Blog (11)

I’m not sure exactly if readers know what the Dynamic Coalition for child safety online is, so I will provide a succint defintion based on the one presented in the meeting itself. According to its members, the

DC on child safety online is a group of individuals who, during the IGF, come

together to look at issues related to online safety for children.

Although many questions were raised in the…

After sitting in on the Commonwealth Regional Network meeting on child safety, I think there were two issues which kept arising in the conversation: access as a whole and the need for more specific legislation

about child safety online.

First of all, the topic of access was mentioned by participants from various Commonwealth states, but especially by the speaker representing West Africa, who made some…

I have to admit that prior to this workshop I knew very little about efforts in the area of youth empowerment in Asia. Most of the time you get to hear about Europe or the US, but rarely are the projects

carried out in the Asia-Pacific region promoted in the press or communities of

some countries, including mine.

The session provided some very useful and interesting information about existing efforts (especially in Hong Kong) aimed…

The workshop provided a very useful introduction as to what constitutes “digital citizenship” , how the internet can be used in order to educate children about what a good citizen is and also what acceptable online

behavior is. The speakers seemed to agree on the fact that digital citizenship

is an emerging field that needs more attention and research. Also, the message

that was prevalent throughout the meeting was that citizenship education needs

to be…

John Carr (eNACSO) made a really good point about how today’s challenges reagarding child safety are not the same problems that we were facing a couple of years ago. Now, children unfortunately give away much too

much about their whereabouts, by constantly posting comments on social newtworking

sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Carr pointed out that some children who are

now on Facebook have close to 5000 friends. Obviously, only a handful of those

are…

I must admit that before the ‘Harnessing all aspects of the net for youth activism’ workshop started, I thought the session was going to be under-represented from the point of view of youth. Especially since it is

dedicated to the role of youth in online participation. I have sat through many

conference during the past couple of years where stakeholders would discuss the

importance of youth being engaged in online activism and…

Although this workshop had the broad theme of freedom of expression, almost half of the time was dedicated to discussing the role that civil society plays in promoting freedom of expression on the internet – which

I thought was a great idea.

Anja Kovacs (Center for Internet and Society) opened with the very interesting example of the blackberry revolution in Saudi Arabia in order to point out that the…

Since a topic of great interest to me is child protection and privacy online, I wanted to give an overview of what I’ve heard on the topic throughout the EuroDig. Most of the

discussion was present in the workshop titled “Children and social media –

opportunities and risks, rules and responsibilities”. Andreas Johanson (Swedish

Regulator) started off with a study in which parents think they know what…

The participants of the EuroDig session on child safety online started by discussing a study which shows that most parents think they know what their children are doing online,

but - in reality – they don’t. This, of

course, means that ensuring child safety on the Internet must include not only

preventing, but also educating and empowering children to seek advice when they

feel that they are abused, bullied…

The EuroDig session on global standards for the Internet and the working world started off with Eduardo Ustaran (Field Fisher Waterhouse) pointing out the following dilemmas:

how can we foster the development of the Internet in a way that safeguards the privacy of users?

And How can we take advantage of the technology available to us in a way that

protects individuals’ information and intellectual property?…