Children and Digital Rights: Northern Ireland Case Study
Date: 3/11/2017 - 3/11/2017
Time: 1:00PM - 2:00PM
Location: 69 University Street, room 0G.007
Price: - FREE
Audience: - All Students, Alumni and Supporters, Business, Corporate / External Relations, International, Postgraduate Research, Postgraduate Taught, Research, Undergraduate
SEMINAR
The Centre for Children's Rights at the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work presents a seminar with Dr Faith Gordon, University of Westminster
The digital world offers many positive opportunities for the current generation of children and young people but there are also significant risks. Children and young people have identified issues they experience. Two significant issues are the content they are exposed to online and the continued use of their social media content, without permission. This paper draws on focus groups with over 170 children and young people, as well as interviews with media journalists, editors, broadcasters, children’s advocates, politicians and police officers. It employs socio-legal analysis to assess the court’s judgment in a recent case in Northern Ireland relating to pre-charge identification of a minor who had been accused of involvement in a high profile national ‘hacking’ case. This demonstrates the negative impact of the lacuna in the current legislation in relation to pre-charge identification of minors and is an area in which urgent reform is required, as further delay is resulting in breaches of children’s rights. A further case study relating to journalists’ use of imagery and comments taken from children’s and young people’s social media accounts, raises questions about who should have access to these images and what are these children’s rights to them? The paper recognises that one significant task for researchers, advocates and policymakers is the complexity of balancing children’s digital participation with their right to protection in the digital age. The paper concludes by presenting several recommendations for policy, regulatory and legislative change in order to ensure that children’s rights are of paramount importance in the digital age.