Fisk-Memo17

Initially, survey data taken from the Rochester Regional Cyber Safety & Ethics Initiative (RRCSEI) will be used as a baseline for policy analysis, allowing for the identification of gaps and discrepancies in extant youth Internet safety policies. The RRCSEI survey was developed and administered to students in 9 Rochester-area school districts over a period of one year, with the majority of districts opting to allow their entire student population from Kindergarten through 12th grade to participate. In total, over 40,000 survey responses were collected, representing the largest single body of quantitative data on youth computer crime to date. Additionally, a variety of qualitative methods will be used to analyze the construction and mobilization of categories of online deviance. The primary interview sites will be junior-high and high schools in New York State, where I will conduct a series of semi-structured interviews with students, teachers and school administrators. While the specific schools at which these interviews will take place will largely be determined by the level of access provided by administrators themselves, I will be targeting rural, suburban and urban schools across the state, with preliminary contact established with the Brighton, Fairport, Webster, Lake George and Fort Ann school districts, in addition to the Monroe and WWSHE BOCES. These interviews will be performed in two separate rounds, during the spring and fall of 2010, to allow for reformulation of interview questions following a period of analysis. In addition, I will perform a discourse analysis of state and federal Internet safety legislation, along with news media coverage of Internet safety issues between 2004 and 2008.