The Roles of NGOs in Search of Transparency and Effectiveness

This chapter consists of an analysis of bullying-prevention, primarily digital citizenship-based educational initiatives that e-safety NGOs develop with companies for the companies’ Safety Centers, and which constitutes an important component of the multi-stakeholder self-regulatory process. NGOs and companies operate in a tightly knit inter-dependent ecology and this section analyzes the benefits and the downsides of this system for the regulatory process, companies, NGOs, children, parents and educators. Companies’ adoption of the concept of “digital citizenship” as an “e-safety product” is examined as well and concerns voiced by some of the interviewees that “digital citizenship” may lose its potential as an empowering policy for youth, as some actors in the multi-stakeholder process use the term merely as a more appealing substitute for the term “e-safety.” E-safety education is said to largely fail to resonate with youth because of its prescriptive messages that children tend not to find convincing.