Fisk-Memo41

OVERVIEW

Over the past 5 years, the safety of children online has emerged as a pressing concern for parents, educators and policy makers, driving shifts in school curriculum, online service offerings and legislation – all to protect youth as they develop skills needed to navigate the “21st Century economy.” Precisely because the development of youth Internet safety legislation and curriculum have been undertaken in the name of protecting children and fostering necessary skills for the future, they have gone relatively unquestioned by researchers and the public. This project asks simply, what work is done through the categorization of youth Internet use, in what ways does this type of categorization trajectorize a specific vision of the future Internet? Viewing the development of “youth Internet safety” legislation and “21st Century Skills” as attempts by dominant discourse to make sense of youth Internet use, this project seeks to better understand:

1.How contemporary categories of online deviance and youth safety have been constructed. 2.How policies based on these categories have reconstituted youth cyberspace(s). 3.The relationship between “youth Internet safety” and the development of “21st Century skills.”

Linking literatures from Science & Technology studies, Anthropology and Criminology, this study advances understanding of the ways in which policies and technologies constrain and enable certain types of cyberspaces, while providing a position from which to envision alternative futures for the Internet and its users.

While policies and programs developed within the discourse of youth Internet safety have undoubtedly played an important role in fostering awareness and mitigation of the risks faced by Internet users, they have far reaching impacts, beyond the protection of children and development of safe learning environments. In a number of less immediately visible ways these policies are reshaping the landscape of cyberspace, both constraining and enabling the ways in which the Internet is used to produce and reproduce culture, while laying the foundations for a specific vision of the future. Discussions about youth Internet safety policies and curricula are currently far from settled, providing a unique historical moment from which to undertake this research, and a potential opportunity to guide future youth Internet safety policies. Youth Internet safety issues remain of significant concern for school administrators and legislators, as evidenced by ongoing legislation and research. This study focuses specifically on youth Internet safety issues New York State, which has attempted to take a leadership role in the development of state legislation on youth Internet safety issues, in addition having significantly guided the development of federal youth Internet safety legislation through New York Senator Charles Schumer.

Each of the above research objectives will be addressed through a series of questions, guiding the study as a whole.

1.How have categories of online deviance and youth safety been constructed? 1.1. How did youth Internet use become problematic for legislators and the public? 1.2. What policy narratives guided the development of youth Internet safety legislation? 1.3. Why are youth Internet safety discourses mobilized?

2.How have youth Internet safety discourses reconstituted youth cyberspace(s)? 2.1. How has everyday youth practice been modified by these policies? 2.2. How have the platforms which support youth interaction online been modified through these policies? 2.3. How have youth come to understand their behavior online through dominant youth Internet safety discourse?

3.What is the relationship between “youth Internet safety” and the development of “21st Century skills?” 3.1. How are categories of online deviance and “21st Century skills?” conflated? 3.2. To what extent do concepts of “21st Century Skills” fit with actual practice online? 3.3. What policy narratives might better fit the actual practices of youth Internet users?

Addressing these questions, this study will draw data primarily from discourse analysis and multi-sited ethnography. Discourse analysis will be performed on state and federal Internet safety legislation effecting New York State, along with news media coverage of Internet safety issues between 2004 and 2008. This analysis will specifically address the first set of research questions, in addition to providing the hegemonic backdrop for answering the second and third. Ethnographic research will inform the second and third research questions, and will be conducted at 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. I will target rural, suburban and urban schools across the state, having established preliminary contact with the Brighton, Fairport, Webster, Lake George and Fort Ann school districts, in addition to the Monroe and WSWHE Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (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. Additionally, data gathered from the Rochester Regional Cyber Safety & Ethics Initiative (RRCSEI) survey (n=40,000) will be used as a baseline for additional policy analysis, adding an additional dimension to the research and allowing for the identification of gaps and discrepancies in extant youth Internet safety policies.

This study broadly contributes to existing literatures in STS, Criminology and Anthropology, advancing discussions of the policy agenda setting process, the social construction of crime and deviance, and the conceptualization of youth and youth culture. Accordingly, the work performed in this study will form the basis for a number of published articles in the fields of STS (e.g. Science, Technology & Human Values), Criminology (e.g. Crime, Media, Culture), and Anthropology (e.g. Cultural Anthropology). Additionally, this research will be of broad interest to parents, teachers, school administrators and legislators who are actively concerned with youth Internet safety issues. Actively targeting those audiences, I will develop curriculum for a series of training workshops on the basis of this research, which will be provided free of charge to all participating school districts.