Workshop on Ethics and Children’s Rights in the Digital Age

Pre-conference ECREA Section: Children, Youth and Media

6th September 2021

Brief description and call for participation:

The purpose of this event is to engage interactively participants in a fruitful dialogue about Ethics and Children’s rights.

The webinar will assume the format of a workshop in which participants are welcome to have a voice, before and during the event. Thus, participants are encouraged to previously introduce their questions to the two Senior Researchers – Eva Lievens (Ghent University) and Elisabeth Staksrud (University of Oslo) who will cover respectively two critical issues – Ethics and Children’s Digital Rights and Ethics in research with children.
For this purpose, participants should either present their questions in the google form of their inscription or send them separately to cym.ecrea2020@gmail.com until August 31st.

Their questions will be taken into account by the speakers and the webinar will include room for discussion. For a brief reminder of the issues at stage, see below:

Ethics and Children’s Digital Rights: Thirty years ago, the UN Convention did not envisage the fast pace of digital evolution and related challenges children and families face. Since then, the digital landscape has been increasingly accessible to younger generations of children and decisions to keep children safe online has created tensions between rights to protection and participation. Considering some polarised debates and controversies on the inevitability of digital in children’s lives and in finding a balanced approach, we invite researchers and scholars to discuss and reflect on ethics concerning children’s protection, participation, and provision rights and how these transfer to the digital? What changes (or not) in the digital sphere? How can we think these rights properly, namely right to privacy, image rights, right of personal portrayal?

Ethics in research with children: When doing research with children and young people, ethical issues arise at all stages of the life cycle of the research projects and invite to reflexivity. Issues related to trust are raised when: i) Contacting gatekeepers and accessing children and young people. Requirements may differ depending on the country, the place of research and the groups we want to do research with. ii) Building rapport and negotiating consent with children and young people and explaining issues related to anonymity and confidentiality. iii) Saving and using photographs and videos of children and young people in research outputs (security, misuse, dissemination…). iv) Involving children and young people in the analyses of the data and in the dissemination of results.

Program*:

10h00 – Welcome participants

10h15 – Lecture in Ethics and Digital Rights, by Eva Lievens

10h45 – Lecture in Ethical Challenges in doing research with children, by Elisabeth Staksrud

11h15 – Sharing and discussing

12h00 – Closing

*GMT Timezone

Inscription:

Inscription is open until August 31st using this google form.

Organizer:

Children, Youth and Media (CYM) Section (cym.ecrea2020@gmail.com)

Local organizers:

Sara Pereira (ICS/University of Minho, CECS)
Cristina Ponte (FCSH/Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, ICNOVA) 
Teresa Sofia Castro (FCSH/Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, ICNOVA)
Pedro Moura (ICS/University of Minho, CECS)