Fisk-Memo19

3 Field Sites:

//1. Rochester-area school districts (Brighton, Fairport, Webster...)// //2. Upstate NY-area school districts (Lake George, Fort Ann, Troy)// //3. Non-site: Youth Internet Safety researchers (McQuade, Ybarra, boyd, Mitchell, Lenhart)//

Interviews will be conducted with students, teachers and administrators in a number of upstate NY school districts, preferably spread across rural, suburban and urban areas. These interviews will provide a basis for analyzing the construction of youth internet use by both those who engage in it, and those who are tasked with monitoring it. Additionally, the Rochester-area districts provide an opportunity to look back on the RRCSEI survey from the perspective of those who took it, and potentially to assess the impacts the survey research had in those districts.

While technically not a "site", I will additionally be interviewing those who study youth Internet safety issues, to develop an understanding on the ways in which youth internet safety is constructed through research, and to understand how this research has been used and misused by the public.

__From HASS:__ 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.

New York State provides an ideal location for the study of youth Internet safety and online deviance. New York was among the first states to begin adopting Internet safety practices in schools and one of the first to develop Internet safety legislation, with the passing of the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators (e-STOP) Act in 2008. At a national level, New York Senator Charles Schumer introduced the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act. Additionally, the New York legislature has extended Internet safety to include video game content, making New York the only state to successfully pass video game legislation. Beyond legislation and policy, New York is the site of a wide variety of extralegal encounters between youth, policy makers and private organizations. Examples include the aforementioned move by attorney general Andrew Cuomo to restrict access to Usenet newsgroups, and the launching of an educational Internet safety pilot program – backed by both the then state senate majority leader Joseph Bruno one of the major intellectual property industry associations, the Entertainment Software association – in Rensselaer county.