Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Net Children Go Mobile:Initial Findings From Ireland, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Articles

Net Children Go Mobile is a two-year research project funded under the European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme. Seven countries participate: Demark, Italy, Romania, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal and Belgium.

The project uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate access and use, risks and opportunities of mobile internet use. This report presents the initial findings of the survey of children and young people’s use of mobile internet technologies in Ireland. 500 9-16 year olds were interviewed face-to-face in their homes. The fieldwork was carried out in Ireland by Ipsos MRBI in November and December 2013.

Policy Influences And Country Clusters: A Comparative Analysis Of Internet Safety Policy Implementation, Brian O'Neill

Articles

EU Kids Online has developed a four cluster classification of 25 European countries based on the activities undertaken, the exposure to risk and harm, and type of internet safety mediation experienced by young people across Europe.

The purpose of this report is to add a further dimension by examining the policy context and to look at how countries within each cluster approach implementation of internet safety. Implementation in this context refers to a) policy frameworks and b) policy actions undertaken at the individual country/regional level.

Children’S Rights Online: Challenges, Dilemmas And Emerging Directions, Sonia Livingstone, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Although it is widely held that a more inclusive and trusted internet can support a competitive knowledge economy, a digitally skilled labour force, civic participation and a pluralistic media sector, governments and regulators have tended to avoid intervening directly to achieve these aims, believing that industry is best positioned to respond to the fast pace of change in information and communication technologies (ICT).This reflects a wider policy shift away from top-down government measures towards flexible, dispersed and indirect forms of governance, encompassing industry self-regulation as well as elements of cooperation or co-regulation with relevant state agencies.

Ireland, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Media literacy education in Ireland despite being under-resourced and relatively new to the public policy arena, builds on a long tradition and a solid foundation of critical engagement, creative activity and practical implementation. From a traditional position of protectionism in Irish cultural and educational policy, media literacy has rapidly moved to embrace new opportunities for greater participation and creative endeavour.

Mobile 2d And 3d Spatial Query Techniques For The Geospatial Web, Junjun Yin

Doctoral

The increasing availability of abundant geographically referenced information in the Geospatial Web provides a variety of opportunities for developing value-added LBS applications. However, large data volumes of the Geospatial Web and small mobile device displays impose a data visualization problem, as the amount of searchable information overwhelms the display when too many query results are returned. Excessive returned results clutter the mobile display, making it harder for users to prioritize information and causes confusion and usability problems. Mobile Spatial Interaction (MSI) research into this “information overload” problem is ongoing where map personalization and other semantic based filtering mechanisms are essential …

What Do Users Need? Exploring Influences On The Adoption Of Mobile Content And The Differences Among Categories Of Adopters, Janaina Maia Gonzaga De Oliveira

Doctoral

Businesses develop products and services with the goal of earning a satisfactory return on their original investment of time and capital. For their part, consumers seek out products and services that meet a recognized need. However, predicting the adoption rate of any new technology is an inexact science, and some businesses find themselves on the wrong side of the curve. The variables factoring into consumers’ purchasing decisions are manifold and contingent on a wider network of influences. This research suggests that a primary variable that influences consumers’ adoption of a technological innovation (in this case, mobile content) is the perception …

Cyberbullying Among 9-16 Year Olds In Ireland, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Reports

• Almost a quarter (23%) of 9-16 year olds surveyed experienced some form of bullying, online or offline. Bullying online or by mobile is less common (4%) than face to face. Levels of bullying in Ireland are a little above the average reported by the 25 countries (23% vs. 19%) but lower for cyberbullying (4% vs. 6%).
• Bullying face to face is experienced by younger children (under 12) as well as by older teens. Online bullying is much less common among younger 9-12 olds and happens mostly to teenagers.

Risks And Safety On The Internet: Comparing Brazilian And European Children, Alexander Barbosa, Brian O'Neill, Cristina Ponte, Simões Simões, Tatiana Jereissati

Articles

A child’s home and school are the most frequently reported locations of internet use in Brazil: 60% of Brazilian children aged 9 to 16 who used the internet claimed to access it from home, and 42% from school, whereas in Europe this proportion is 87% for home access and 63% for schools.

However, when it comes to accessing the network from publicly sponsored internet access centres such as Local Area Network (LAN) Houses or cybercafés, the value in Brazil is considerably higher when compared to Europe, 35% against 12% respectively. Access from public libraries is far more popular in Europe …

New Perspectives On Audience Activity: ‘Prosumption’ And Media Activism As Audience Practices, Brian O'Neill, J. Ignacio Gallego, Frauke Zeller

Books/Book chapters

Until relatively recently, the subject of social relationships, constituted in and through audience practices, has been a minor part of audience research studies. This chapter explores how social relationships and forms of audience agency change and / or evolve, through the usage of both traditional and ‘new’ media. In a media environment where traditional and new media worlds collide, the potential of audience practices to rework, not only media-audience relationships, but also wider social relationships, is now an important research theme. Two key examples of mediated relationships between social actors in conditions brought about through transformations in media culture are …

Internet Policies: Online Child Protection And Empowerment In A Global Context, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Children’s use of the internet has in the first decade of the twenty-first century become a matter of major policy concern. With increasing numbers of young people going online at ever-younger ages and through diverse platforms, governments, NGOs and industry stakeholders have demonstrably increased the attention given to matters of safety and child protection online whilst grappling with rapidly changing trends and technological developments. Policy in this area is most often framed in terms of the need to balance the hugely important opportunities the internet offers children whilst recognising that as minors they require protection. In addition, internet policy for …

Who Cares?:Practical Ethics And The Problem Of Underage Users On Social Networking Sites, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Internet companies place a high priority on the safety of their services and on their corporate responsibility towards protection of all users, especially younger ones. However, such efforts are undermined by the large numbers of children who circumvent age restrictions and lie about their age to gain access to such platforms. This paper deals with the ethical issues that arise in this not-so-hypothetical situation. Who, for instance, bears responsibility for children’s welfare in this context? Are parents/carers ethically culpable in failing to be sufficiently vigilant or even facilitating their children’s social media use? Do industry providers do enough to enforce …

E-Society And Children's Participation: Risks, Opportunities And Barriers, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Children are important subjects of information society policy, particularly in the context of digital learning opportunities and e-inclusion. However, their participation is also a cause of concern and anxiety for policy makers. With ever-earlier adoption of new internet technologies and services by children, concerns arise as to how to ensure adequate protection whilst seeking to encourage and foster online opportunities. A delicate balancing act is required to manage risks while promoting better participation in e-society. To better inform this policy field, EU Kids Online conducted a pan-European survey of children’s use of the internet, resulting in the first fully comparable …

Manual Evaluation Of Synthesised Sign Language Avatars, Robert G. Smith Mr, Brian Nolan Dr.

Conference Papers

The evaluation discussed in this paper explores the role that underlying facial expressions might have regarding understandability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish Sign Language (ISL), we examine the Deaf community’s appetite for sign language avatars. The work presented explores the following hypothesis: Augmenting an existing avatar with various combinations of the 7 widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman [1] to achieve underlying facial expressions, will make that avatar more human-like and consequently improve usability and understandability for the ISL user. Using human evaluation methods [2] we compare an augmented set of avatar utterances against a baseline …

Social Networking Among Irish 9-16 Year Olds, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Reports

Social networking is a hugely popular and fast-growing online activity for young people in Ireland. In the EU Kids Online survey, while SNS use was not the most frequently mentioned online activity (‘watching video clips’ and ‘playing computer games’ were the most often cited items), it features across all age groups, and particularly so for teenagers.

A Crowdsourcing Approach To Labelling A Mood Induced Speech Corpus, John Snel, Alexey Tarasov, Charlie Cullen, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

This paper demonstrates the use of crowdsourcing to accumulate ratings from na ̈ıve listeners as a means to provide labels for a naturalistic emotional speech dataset. In order to do so, listening tasks are performed with a rating tool, which is delivered via the web. The rating requirements are based on the classical dimensions, activation and evaluation, presented to the participant as two discretised 5-point scales. Great emphasis is placed on the participant’s overall understanding of the task, and on the ease-of-use of the tool so that labelling accuracy is reinforced. The accumulation process is ongoing with a goal to …

Digital Literacy, Digital Opportunities, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Other resources

Summary

• Online activities for 9-16 year olds in Ireland are substantially below European norms leaving many opportunities unexplored.

• 57% of young people don’t go beyond the second step of a ‘ladder of opportunities’.

• Cluster analysis shows that ‘a low use, low risk’ pattern to be the most prominent followed by a “moderate-use, entertainment and communication- oriented” use of the internet.

• Young people’s digital skills are closer to the European average though less than half express confidence in their own skills.

• Younger children, in particular, are lacking in many basic safety skills.

‘Think B4 U Click’: An Educational Online Safety Resource For The Irish Cspe Curriculum, Simon Grehan, Sharon Mclaughlin, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Young people in Ireland, like their counterparts across Europe, are enthusiastic social networkers. EU Kids Online found that in 2010 82% of children in Ireland, aged 13-16, had a social networking (SNS) profile (O’Neill, Grehan, & Ólafsson, 2011). Social networking gives young people extraordinary opportunities to communicate with peers, share information and explore new friendships, in the relative security of an online community created through a social networking platform. Much concern has been expressed about young people's apparent lack of concern about privacy issues (boyd & Marwick, 2011) and about the dangers they may be exposed to by failing to …

Children And E-Society: Identifying Barriers To Participation, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

Children are widely seen as direct beneficiaries and indeed often as the primary targets of information society policies, particularly those geared towards enhancing learning opportunities, access to information and building inclusiveness and participation in society. The European Union’s Digital Agenda places a safer and better internet for children at the heart of its policy platform. And yet, more often than not, children’s e-society participation has been a cause of concern and anxiety for policy makers, particularly with ever-increasing early adoption of new internet technologies and services by children and young people. Such concerns have been motivated by the responsibilities held …

Irish Kids Online: Comparing Youth And Parent Perspectives, Brian O'Neill, Thuy Dinh

Other resources

Summary

Parents in Ireland do take an active interest in their children’s internet use. However, they tend to be more restrictive in their approach compared to other countries in Europe with a consequent reduction in children’s online opportunities.

This report compares young people’s and parents’ responses in the EU Kids Online survey. It shows that parents are not always aware of risks their children encounter, are perhaps more fearful of online dangers, and express less confidence about their ability to help their children to cope with problems they encounter.

The implications of these findings suggest that it is important that …

Policy Implications And Rrecommendations: Now What?, Brian O'Neill, Elisabeth Staksrud

Books/Book chapters

The EU Kids Online survey represents the most substantial knowledge base to date about young people’s online experiences in Europe. Chapters in this volume highlight findings that provide new kinds of evidence of significant interest for policy makers. They address questions which range from how to respond to the fact that the internet is now firmly in children’s lives; how to develop appropriate strategies for internet safety while responding to shifting patterns of access and use; how to manage those enduring risks to children’s welfare that appear to be amplified in the online world, and deal with risks that are …

How Irish Political Parties Are Using Social Networking Sites To Reach Generation Z: An Insight Into A New Online Social Network In A Small Democracy, Kevin Lynch, John Hogan

Articles

No abstract provided.

Trust In The Information Society, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Trust is an important feature for all users of the Internet who rely on the safety and security of network technologies and systems for their daily lives. Trust, or the lack of it, has also been identified by the European Commission’s Digital Agenda as a major barrier to further development of the information society in Europe. One of the areas in which concerns have been raised is in relation to children’s safety online. As a result, substantial efforts have been made by policymakers and by the industry to build greater trust and confidence in online digital safety. This paper examines …

Evaluating The Similarity Estimator Component Of The Twin Personality-Based Recommender System, Alexandra Roshchina, John Cardiff, Paolo Rosso

Conference Papers

With the constant increase in the amount of information available in online communities, the task of building an appropriate Recommender System to support the user in her decision making process is becoming more and more challenging. In addition to the classical collaborative filtering and content based approaches, taking into account ratings, preferences and demographic characteristics of the users, a new type of Recommender System, based on personality parameters, has been emerging recently. In this paper we describe the TWIN (Tell Me What I Need) Personality Based Recommender System, and report on our experiments and experiences of utilizing techniques which allow …

Final Recommendations For Policy, Methodology And Research, Brian O'Neill, Sonia Livingstone, Sharon Mclaughlin

Reports

The EU Kids Online project aims to enhance knowledge of European children’s and parents’ experiences and practices regarding risky and safer use of the internet and new online technologies, and thereby to inform the promotion of a safer online environment for children. The project is coordinated by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), with research teams and stakeholder advisers in each of the 25 countries and an International Advisory Panel. The network has been funded by the European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme in order to strengthen the evidence base for policies regarding online safety.

Growing Up Online: Some Myths And Facts About Children's Digital Lives In Ireland Today, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

Digital technologies and the widespread adoption of the internet have given rise to an unprecedented social transformation that is having a profound impact on childhood today. While debate continues on the precise nature of its effects and the extent to which we can refer to a distinctly different ‘digital’ generation, there is growing consensus that the centrality of new modes of sociality and new ways of communicating online in children’s lives today are shaping new contours of risk and of opportunity. This paper examines some of the myths and the facts about children's use of the internet in Ireland today …

Trust, Safety, Security: Framing Eu Kids Online Policy Recommendations Within The Digital Agenda For Europe, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

Since 2006, EU Kids Online – a thematic research network funded under the Safer Internet Programme - has sought to extend knowledge and inform policy regarding the opportunities that the internet affords children and young people, the risks they experience online, and the impact on children when they encounter difficulties. This paper seeks to locate EU Kids Online policy recommendations within the overarching European strategy and policy framework known as A Digital Agenda for Europe and to assess gaps in the current provision for internet safety. Originating with the Safer Internet Action Plan (1999-2004), the European Union has for over …

Media Education And The Development Of Media Competence, Brian O'Neill

Other

The development of media competence is now widely recognized in educational and policy circles as essential to the formation of well-balanced citizens, capable of making their own judgements and participating fully in society. This presentation will focus on efforts in Irish education to support media competence and how it can contribute to sustainable policies for children, youth and families.

Media Literacy In Ireland: From Protectionism To Participation, Brian O'Neill

Other

Media literacy education in Ireland despite being under-resourced and relatively new to the public policy arena, builds on a long tradition and a solid foundation of critical engagement, creative activity and practical implementation. From a traditional position of protectionism in Irish cultural and educational policy, media literacy has rapidly moved to embrace new opportunities for greater participation and creative endeavour. This presentation will briefly sketch the contours of this development and identify the key elements of this multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary field.

Risks And Safety For Children On The Internet: The Ireland Report, Brian O'Neill, Simon Grehan, Kjartan ÓLafsson

Reports

This report presents initial findings for Ireland from the pan-European EU Kids Online survey – a large 25 country survey conducted by EU Kids Online and funded by the EC’s Safer Internet Programme. The questionnaire was designed by the EU Kids Online network, coordinated by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Fieldwork was conducted by Ipsos MORI.

In what follows, Irish findings are compared with those from other countries, as reported in Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2010). Risks and safety on the internet: The perspective of European children. Initial findings. LSE, London: EU …

Risks And Safety On The Internet: Eu Kids Online Findings From Ireland, Brian O'Neill

Other

Children and young people in Ireland, as shown throughout the EU Kids Online survey, in many respects are among the leaders in most aspects on internet use compared to their counterparts from across Europe. Use of the internet at home among Irish children is well above the European average (87% vs. 62%). Access via school or college is much the same (66% vs. 63%). Using the internet ‘when out and about’ is also higher for children in Ireland than in Europe generally (20% vs. 9%) reflecting the growing popularity of mobile internet access through smartphones, laptops and other handheld devices.