HUWY: learning about Internet governance from young people

From E-Consultation Guide

Jump to: navigation, search

by Dr. D. R. Newman, Queen's University Management School, and UK co-ordinator of the HUWY project.

A updated talk given at the EU e-Forum Privacy Working Group workshop, 17 March 2011, Brunel University, London.

Feedback at the meeting: text me your ideas and questions on 077707 35474, or use Twitter (hash tag #eforumprivacy) or stick up your hand.
Follow-up later: contact Feargal O'Kane - details on http://huwy.eu/

What is the HUWY project?

In 4 countries,
80 groups of young people,
have discussed the Internet,
on their favourite on-line sites (Bebo, YouTube, Young Scot, …),
then written up their experiences and ideas for national and European policy-makers

Some experiences

From the summer school

Data for sale on Facebook video
Would you give me your data? audio (being presented).

Why HUWY?

Politicians and officials are worried a low levels of citizen participation, so they are trying:

eParticipation: is about reconnecting ordinary people with politics and policy-making and making the decision-making processes easier to understand and follow through the use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

This includes:

e-Consultation: is the use of electronic computing and communication technologies in consultation processes and is complimentary to existing practices.

In particular, worried about lack of engagement of young people (e.g. low voting rates). But:

Remixing Citizenship by Stephen Coleman: starts from the position that it is not young people that are disconnected from formal politics, but political institutions that are disconnected from young people.

These are the people who grew up with the Internet, but are not taking part in debates on:

Internet governance: is the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet

This includes controversies in:

How HUWY?

We want to get from Internet experiences to policy suggestions

An educational project

Young people, aged 16-21	Policy wonks
grew up with the Internet, have good and bad experiences, have values, can use that experience to come up with innovative solutions.	struggling to understand the Internet, they react to the latest scare story. learning from the young people, they can develop more practical policies.
the teachers	the learners

NOT learning the existing laws
- (as in citizenship education)
but critical thinking generating new codes
- (students teaching permanent secretaries and vice-chancellors)

Process

Recruit people to take part
- young people (16-21)
  - Youth groups (e.g. Young Scot, NI Youth Forum)
  - Student classes in schools and universities
  - Informal groups of friends (e.g. Facebook groups)
  - At least 20 in each country
- policy-makers
  - politicians
  - officials with interests in Internet-related issues
  - members of QUANGOs (e.g. UKIGF, Nominet, UKOLN)
  - managers in all sectors trying to cope with Internet policy problems
Youth leaders attend workshops
- Hub websites include problem scenarios to start discussion, advice on how to facilitate one, and tools to upload final presentations to policy-makers.
Distributed discussions
- Each group goes to their favourite corner of cyberspace to run their own discussion in their own way.
  - Some will use Bebo, Facebook etc.
  - Others can use a discussion forum (e.g. Young Scot)
  - Some may want to create photos, videos or cartoons to explain their message
  - Many will use Web 2.0 tools for Citizen writing
A few people from each group write up on their national hub website:
1. their experiences of growing up with the Internet, and
2. what they want to tell the policy-makers.
- they create summaries, longer presentations, optionally link to their own discussions, and tag the material to show which issues they have discussed.
Interested youth groups attend the European Youth and Social Media summer school.
- In Co. Donegal they discuss the issues, and produce presentations aimed at other young people.
National policy-makers read these materials
- Searching for work relating to their own policy interests
- Tag, annotate and comment on interesting ideas
- Rate presentations (for prizes)
- Explain how what they have read might be used in their policy-making
European policy-makers read aggregated content on EU hub

Making Internet governance interesting

Project has 2 big knowledge transfer problems:

From policy jargon and academic writing into a form that makes young people interested.
From the young people's experiential knowledge to policy ideas and actions.

We know how to do 1, are still not sure how to do 2.

From WSIS to young people's lives

We ran several youth workshops:

Meeting with young people at the Northern Ireland Youth Forum.
Evening workshop at Queen's University Belfast.
Weekend residential workshop in Donegal.
Short workshops in Tartu, Glasgow and Dalkeith.
Meetings with German youth media group Jugendpresse Deutschland.

What doesn't work:

What do you mean, Internet governance?
Why should I read this IGF stuff?
What's it got to do with me?

Even when we split up the themes from WSIS and IGF meetings into concept maps like these:

the individual terms did not spark any interest until someone came up with an example from personal experience.

What does work:

ice breakers (e.g. could you do without the Internet for a week?),
exercises lining participants up between two extreme positions,
viewing and discussing short controversial videos and articles,
discussing stories of problem cases, e.g.
It turns out that an uncle of yours is suspected of accessing child pornography. His email and phone records have been examined by the police. Your details are on those records. Without your knowledge your phone is tapped and your emails read. This continues for over a year, despite nothing errant being discovered. What could you do? What could the government do?^[1]
going on the Internet to pick out the best and worst sites, and
brainstorming sessions in which they identified issues to discuss about the Internet, and rating them according to their importance and interest (using WebIQ)

Chosen topics:

We grouped the issues rated most highly by young people into categories (based on the concept maps of terms used in WSIS and IGF meetings), and came up with this list of hot topics that stand a chance of inspiring discussion.

UK and Ireland	Germany	Estonia
Cyberbullying	Cybermobbing^[2]	Cyberbullying (including social rating)
Child abuse	Zensur und Meinungsfreiheit im Internet^[3]	Child safety
Phishing, ID theft and privacy	Sicherheit und Schutz im Internet (z.B. Computerkriminalität, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit)^[4]	Security (identity, hacking, buying and selling on the internet)
File sharing	File sharing	Copyright
Open topic	Offene Themenstellung	Open topic

From young people's reports to policy

Elicited knowledge problem
- The young people are not being paid, so cannot expect an in-depth policy report from everyone.
- But could get from everyone stories of their experiences, and their values (as likes and dislikes).
- Try to get them to write
  - an early report on their issues and experiences
  - a later one on a particular topic
Knowledge representation problem
- Freedom for young people to express what is important to them, in their own manner.
- Reports organised to meet policy-makers' needs and expectations.
Policy impact problem
- How will policy-makers make use of the young people's reports?
- Where will they enter into formal or informal policy-making processes?
  - Who will guarantee to read what the young people write? And comment on them?
  - Where will their ideas be discussed? IGF? European Parliament? ...

What happened? Results, successes and failures

Reports

HUWY EU portal shows the collected youth reports.
- Lots of personal experiences.
- Aware of privacy problems on-line.
- Ideas on what might be done. Many practical actions to take as users, few policy suggestions.
- Little understanding of how policies might be changed or implemented.
European Youth and Social Media outcomes shows the presentations produced during the summer school.
- More detailed problem descriptions
- More practical solutions
- Youth media (videos etc.) rather than reports to policy-makers.

Examples related to privacy

Problems

Recruitment of young people
- Young people are often overwhelmed by survey requests, so they rely on trusted leaders, such as youth workers and teachers.
- But with threatened public sector cuts, youth workers are sticking to their annual plans, and teachers to the curriculum.
- Need either long-term formal engagement of a sector, or a lot of money spent on publicity.
Recruitment of policy-makers
- They are very interested in the views of young people,
- but only in respect of their current task or enquiry.
- They ask to wait to see what the young people are saying,
- and do not promise to give feedback.
- Need to organise such distributed discussions as part of a government or parliamentary enquiry, like the Irish Parliament did in 2006, or in an ongoing virtual youth parliament.
Type of knowledge elicited
- Easy to get accounts of experiences and what people like and dislike.
- But solutions are often not elaborated, and
- Most young people understand the Internet, but not governance or policy processes.
- Need to find ways of helping groups move on from the first, issues and needs, stage of a mediation process as explained in Technology matching for E-consultation.

Solutions

What do you suggest?

Notes

↑ A teaching case used with law students by Prof. Philip Leith.
↑ Cyberbullying
↑ Freedom of speech and censorship
↑ ID theft, privacy and phishing

[0] A teaching case used with law students by Prof. Philip Leith.

[1] Cyberbullying

[2] Freedom of speech and censorship

[3] ID theft, privacy and phishing

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]