Can E-safety Compromise Children’s Rights?

This chapter provides a more elaborate review and a critical examination of research findings about digital bullying, drawing from an interdisciplinary literature. In light of these findings, it critically analyzes media coverage of e-safety, online risks and harms, which digital bullying is an example of, as well as moral and technopanics –exaggerated concerns over youth use of technology and the consequences that emerge under such circumstances for various stakeholders. This chapter also builds the case for considering protection from digital bullying in the context of children’s rights. Wider social and cultural problems that remain less discussed in public discourse on digital bullying are given special attention to, building the case as to why it is important to address the culture of humiliation, focusing attention on dignity, rather than engaging in simplistic binaries of finger-pointing that are so often witnessed in the aftermaths of digital bullying cases.

When Cyberbullying Ends in Suicide

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book and it starts with a very brief overview of several online bullying cases that resulted in suicides (which are elaborated on later in the book) and that garnered significant attention from the media internationally. The chapter explains the dynamic between the relevant stakeholders (regulators, industry, parents/caregivers, media, educators) that emerge in such cases, focusing briefly on the pressures that the companies where these incidents took place can face under such circumstances, which leads to the development of their self-regulatory mechanisms (cyberbullying policies, intervention and prevention mechanisms). This chapter also details the scope of the book and the questions it raises.

Industry Self-Regulation in the US and in the EU

This chapter analyzes the regulatory environment with implications for digital bullying with a specific focus on the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). Relevant regulatory stakeholders are explained as well as the process of self-regulation vs. traditional, command-and-control legislation and the benefits and downsides of each in the context of digital bullying. Self-regulation is distinguished from private regulation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and literature that compares differences in self-regulatory traditions in the US and EU is examined, together with discussions on co-regulation. The term “alternative regulatory instruments” or ARIs (Lievens, 2010) is proposed and the author specifies how the terms “self-regulation” and “private regulation” are used in the book and subsequent chapters. It is argued that few companies examined in this book have been part of traditional self-regulatory initiatives but have rather adopted and developed policies via industry best practices. The issue of scarcity of independent evaluation, especially from children’s perspective, is raised, and how such a state of affairs reflects upon children’s rights.

Toward a Culture of Dignity

This chapter functions as a conclusion to the results presented in the book by applying the dignity framework to the findings, and placing the policy in the context of broader social and cultural context –showing how bullying is a form of humiliation and dignity deprivation that is by no means unique to youth. This less discussed aspect of the issue is nonetheless of key relevance to policy development. A policy framework that balances the need for child protection with child participation and empowerment, is proposed, thus honoring the full spectrum of children’s human rights. The proposed lens through which the issue can be approached is not so much about “protecting children from what happens on the platforms” but rather about finding a way to protect the vulnerable while ensuring participation in digital spaces that is necessary for children’s development.

Strengths and Limitations of Self-Regulation

A more transparent self-regulatory framework is proposed here and it is argued in the chapter that operational policies need to be publicized and that mechanisms adopted by the companies need to be publicly available and regularly evaluated. Introducing regular independent evaluation of the mechanisms’ effectiveness is recommended as an essential component of effective self-regulation, and it is currently missing. Here, it is also explained why transparency is not the end-goal in and of itself. The aim behind ensuring transparency is to allow for an evaluation of the mechanisms’ effectiveness from youth perspective, which could open up space for changes in policies and mechanisms in a way that works for youth. This evaluation should nonetheless be independent –meaning that it is not executed by the companies themselves but rather by a third party whose impartial nature is established through regulatory monitoring.

Perils of Politics-Driven Regulation

This chapter provides an analysis of five digital bullying cases that resulted in suicides (the so-called “high profile cases”). The chapter documents the pressures that companies face when such circumstances arise; the nature of the public discussion and media coverage, reactions from relevant stakeholders and how such circumstances may result in government regulation that does not necessarily address the problem in a manner that benefits children. The consequences of similar legislation that developed in the aftermath of tragic incidents in other parts of the world are also examined, ushering the discussion on liability protections for intermediaries and self-regulatory systems that are taken up in the next chapter.

Shaping Company Responsibility: Privatized Public Sphere

This chapter surveys social media platforms whose policies are examined in this book and gives an overview of critical research on the increasing role of private intermediaries in regulating digital environments (DeNardis, 2014), placing this information against the safe harbor provisions of the CDA and DMCA, which ensure limited liability for online intermediaries. The brief company profiles are meant to provide an overview for those readers who are not familiar with these companies and their history in relationship to bullying incidents. Following Gillespie (2010, 2015) and van Dijck (2013), the chapter examines the literature on discourses of platforms.

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.

Untangling the Companies’ Motives and Actions

An analysis of the policies and mechanisms that social media companies have developed to address bullying on their platforms is provided in this chapter. Relying on an analysis of texts and an examination of specific platforms, as well as on in-depth interviews with social media companies, e-safety experts and NGO representatives, the chapter documents what is missing in the policies and what the implications of such wording are. The companies’ moderation systems are examined, what can be known about their effectiveness and the consequences of such mechanisms for child protection and empowerment on the one hand and users’ freedom of speech on the other. The pattern of how the policies tend to evolve, and how this development can affect the perceptions of regulators, is considered as well.