How to ensure it’s safe

In recent days (4-7 March) the Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with the European Research Group Mentor at the University of Barcelona, convened a Conference in Riyadh of some of the world’s leading experts in the mass media (TV, internet and mobile telephony) to discuss the question: “Risks in the media world: a comparison between international experiences”. It was billed as the “First International Conference of Media Education”. And its aim was to identify guidelines for co-regulation of the new means of mass communication to prevent possible harmful effects, especially on the new generations. To coincide with the international conference, the first international exhibition on information technologies that have an impact on the relation between media and education was held. Below we give excerpts from an interview with one of the main speakers at the Conference, the general secretary of the Italian Research Centre Eurispes, MARCO RICCERI , who presented a report on “Risks in the media world”.HOW TO DEAL WITH “DANGEROUS SITES”. “In Europe 71% of Danish youth (from the age of 8 to 17) regularly uses Internet; 40% in Italy, Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg. 52% of European youth (aged between 14 and 17) declare that they log into Internet every day. In these conditions it’s clear the young run the risk not just of addiction, but also of coming into contact with dangerous or illegal websites: the sites that propose messages of violence (flaming) and of war, the sites on which criminal offences are proposed, and also sites of sexual arousal”, said Marco Ricceri, general secretary of Eurispes, in his introductory remarks to Conference in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, from 4-7 March. Without ignoring dramatic facts such as the 34 cases of collective suicide organized via Internet in Japan in 2005, with 91 victims, and the same phenomenon that had registered 19 cases with 55 victims in the previous year, Ricceri pointed out that the world wide web is also producing the phenomenon of so-called “Internet addiction”, a form of dependence that may have various causes and various manifestations: addiction to role play, to internet gaming, to multimedial chat, to virtual sex, to excess information, to dating by internet.WHAT’S BEING DONE IN EUROPE. As Ricceri explained, the European Internet Co-Regulation Network (EICN) has calculated that in 2003 between a quarter and a third of European youth between the ages of 9 and 16 were accidentally exposed to violent, offensive, sexual and pornographic messages. The English researcher Sonia Livingstone has ascertained that in 2004 36% of English youth aged 9-19 found themselves accessing pornographic sites while they were searching for other messages or information on the Internet; 25% received pornographic material by email, without having requested it. “In this case – says Livingstone – it’s of great interest to understand how the important project of the European Union, the Safer Internet Project, is being adapted and implemented in the individual member states. It is also interesting to understand how the plans for safer Internet are being applied in the various European countries, through various filtering programmes: blacklisting (that prevent certain sites from being opened) and whitelisting systems (that vice versa only permit certain sites to be opened)”. One fact that seems certain at the present time is that throughout Europe “the most positive results have been achieved when the police services have received the active cooperation and help in this work from schools and volunteer associations, and especially from parents and families”. AN EFFECTIVE EDUCATION. “In the definition of the Eicn, contained in a Report presented to the European Commissioner Viviane Reding in July 2005, it is recognized, very properly – says Ricceri – that Internet, more than a “mass media”, i.e. a means of communication in the traditional sense of the term, is a virtual community, a virtual market”. It is defined as a “social space”. To obtain concrete results in terms of Internet governance, the Eicn proposes to follow the system of “co-regulation”, a term launched in France in 1998, and an approach intended to overcome the previous attempts of self-regulation that had signally failed. On the basis of co-regulation, all public and private players must share responsibilities for safer Internet, especially the three main players: public authorities, businesses and organizations of civil society. Only by working together, and by fostering their interdependence, can they find the best solutions for a positive use of Internet. Ricceri also points out that, apart from this accord between “public and private players”, another means is also indispensable: “An effective education of the young, without which no results can be achieved”.