The Council of Europe Digital Citizenship Education project. Analysis of its human rights and multi-stakeholder governance approach

Abstract

The field of children online safety and rights has gained greater attention in the policy agenda in western societies, and particularly in Europe. This is connected to the region’s uneasiness with more complex issues that no longer regard only children accessing online pornographic content and adults “grooming” them, but mostly the increasing phenomenon of online hate speech and radicalisation. Influenced by this, strategies to address online risks have been discussed in connection with concerns of the internet governance and implications of this on children’s rights and democracy (Livingstone & Bulger, 2014; Livingstone & O'Neill, 2014; Livingstone & Third, 2017). Aiming to address these problems, the Council of Europe launched in 2016 a “Digital Citizenship Education project” (DCE project) which proposal is advanced in a working version of the DCE handbook, a selection of good practices, and a set of policy recommendations. This case study analyses the main features of the project and compares these with previous and emerging approaches. The methodology consists of a qualitative analysis the project’s official texts which was complemented with interviews to members of the DCE project expert group. The DCE project is clearly influenced by debates on the deficit of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child online, particularly concerning children’s right to participation. Firstly, the documents highlight participatory competences and feature more references to rights, and children’s opinions were included in the development of the project. Secondly, it proposes a shared responsibility approach among various actors and the implementation of a multi-stakeholder governance, something that is already facilitating and leading through the activities of this project. However, the advanced framework and recommended practices still emphasize users’ responsibilities, its references to participation and rights do not represent significant changes compared to other models and are in most cases limited to the promotion of social literacies. Furthermore, this study presents some questions in terms of the democratic nature of the DCE project and implications on the effectiveness on the Council’s proposed multi-stakeholder governance strategy.